Fine Print
by CoffeeWench
Summary: Underground spells, not being printed, don't technically COME with fine print, but it was there; as no one reads fine print, Sarah had missed it. REVISIONS begun 2/11. Holy cow, Chapter 11 is better now, and there's actually a new chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Labyrinth_ belongs to LucasFilms, Henson Studios, etc, etc.

* * *

It was not a dark and stormy night; the sky was threatening nothing more dramatic than a few puffy cumulus clouds. Perfect for cloud-gazing, for letting your eyes fool themselves into thinking that that blob right there closely resembled a rabbit on fire… with its head falling off.

Of _course_ Sarah had to be in class. And of course Allison, the Stagecrafts teacher, was waxing philosophical. They would be in class until 6 pm, and then cloud-gazing would be a moot endeavor. It was 5:15, and the sun was starting to set; the clouds would look so fine just now, and Sarah was going to miss it. _Such a pity –_

Sarah shook her head slightly. That wouldn't do. If she were going to be distracted from class, it was going to be for a perfectly mundane reason. Sarah must, for the moment, not daydream about something that may or may not have happened nearly seven years ago. Images of dwarves, foxes, pants that looked poured on, goblins, bad late 80s hair, and creatures that resembled rabbits made of flame flickered across her mind. She noted them with a mix of nostalgia and disapproval, smiling ruefully.

"Yes, Sarah? Anything to add?" Allison's voice was polite and inquisitive.

Sarah, seated front and center and suddenly in possession of the attention of the entire class, almost blushed and scratched her nose. "A tickle. Trying not to sneeze."

"Oh. No thoughts on Mandy's corset?" The garment and girl in question stood at the front of the room, awaiting a grade on its construction. Allison's sausage-fingered hand flapped in that direction.

Willing Allison to end class early, Sarah answered, "Nothing that hasn't been said. Fine construction, but the material needs a little rethinking." Her slim shoulders shrugged, and she smiled apologetically at Mandy, who grinned back.

Allison's hands fluttered, as if physically trying to recapture her train of thought. "Ah, ok." Watery brown eyes flicked around the room and blinked rapidly in mild distress. "Well, it looks like Mandy was the last to go. I… guess that's it."

The class, four young men and thirteen women of varying ages (and no few of them were obese in that American way), shifted restlessly in aged plastic seats. They accidentally hit each other's elbows while shifting – the room was designed to fit half their number. The sooner they could escape, the happier they'd be.

Allison sighed and said the words.

"I wish – "

_- The Goblin King would come and take you away right now._

"- you all a good Spring Break!"

Sarah shook her head again and leaned over to collect her backpack. Her chestnut hair – waist length now, something of which she was vastly proud – fell in a curtain over her shoulder, and she absently pushed it back. Just as absently, she took it up into a sort of ponytail, slung her bag onto her back, and tossed the hair on top of it all.

"Either you're gonna have to cut all that off or start wearing it up, hon," a voice observed from somewhere behind her.

Turning to face the speaker, Sarah drawled, "You going to buy me some hair ties, Eric?"

The five-foot-six and improbably thin junior stood behind her with his hip cocked. "Nope. I'm gonna chop all that hair off next time you fall asleep in class."

"Do and die, friend," was her response. She said it with a slow smile that showed off one canine tooth and not much else.

Eric's square face went blank, and then his brow wrinkled. "You know I'm joking, right?" he asked.

It was Sarah's turn to pause and frown. "Uh, yeah. So am I."

Eric's smile was strained and relieved at the same time, the skin around his wide brown eyes tightening. He coughed. "Do you realize how scary you can be, Sarah? I mean really. Every once in a while, there's something that…" The youth twirled one hand in a searching manner. "… It's like there's someone inside you that you keep under wraps, but every once in a while, they take over your face, your eyes, and they are very scary."

"… You need more sleep, Eric." Sarah's tone was light, but a worried line formed between her brows. "I promise, I harbor only one person in here." She jabbed a slender finger at her sternum.

Eric chuckled uneasily and rubbed his hand over a buzz-cut head. "Hey, wanna go for Indian? I have a sudden, deep, implacable craving," he announced. He wriggled his high-arched, nearly invisibly blond eyebrows at Sarah and smirked. He cocked his hip the other way and slung his black messenger bag over his right shoulder.

Unable, as usual, to discern whether Eric's flirtations were harmless or serious, Sarah sighed. "Sorry, man. I'm gonna go make some use of the good weather before nightfall. Thanks for the invite, though."

"You sure? I'd buy." His expression softened from lascivious to friendly.

"No, thanks."

It didn't take long for Sarah to make it out of the theatre department and halfway across campus. With the regal, ground-devouring steps that came with long legs, Sarah passed half the academic buildings and reached the lawn of the library in no time. In one movement, which she'd practiced but never would admit to practicing, Sarah swung her blue bag onto the ground and flopped down as well. Her head landed squarely on top of the bag, hair firmly between her and the ground; the only thing that saved this performance from appearing too practiced was the fact that she had to irritably pull her hair to the side, where it then lay in a decidedly inelegant tangle.

The sky above was deepening into a cobalt hue. The cumulus clouds, whose tops were being spun out to cirrus clouds up top, were glowing a nuclear pinkish orange. And Sarah tilted her head a bit and squinted at a cloud that very closely resembled a dancing rabbit on fire.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: LucasFilms, Henson Studios, etc, own _Labyrinth_.

* * *

Sarah Williams was the daughter (and technically, step-daughter, though she'd not emphasized that for some time now) of some very upper-middle class people. As such, she could have afforded an apartment of her own in a fairly nice neighborhood. As a stubborn young woman full of pride and intentions to lead an impoverished life as either an actor or a teacher, Sarah refused to ask this of her parents.

Thus, when Sarah went "home", "home" meant "a teeny tiny duplex across Market St. that she shared with two other young women and a rabbit". It was to this place that she walked in the dark; she did so with a sharpened pencil in one hand and a can of mace ready in the other. Sarah had once been a dreamer unaware of the dangers around her, and she was no longer that girl. She made it home with no incident, opened the door to an empty house – it was the beginning of Spring Break, after all, and Marianne and Carrie were party girls – and began to prepare supper.

While breaking up ground beef into the saucepan on her stove, Sarah considered her day. Like yesterday, and like every day before it, she had spent her energy forcing herself to pay attention to class, to the teachers, to whoever was speaking. It was a daily struggle, and some days were easier than others.

Sarah had always daydreamed, much to the detriment of her schooling, but it hadn't interfered too greatly until one week in her fifteenth year. After a night when her parents had been out, Sarah had transformed from a melodramatic malcontent into a determined, thoughtful young woman; a second transformation had occurred in the form of what seemed to be a late-developing case of Attention Deficit Disorder. While she made efforts in school that had never before been seen in her, Sarah's grades slipped, and her teachers had to call her to attention again and again – her hard work went all but unrecognized. Her parents had had her diagnosed, and she had barely escaped Ritalin by taking classes on meditation.

The meditation classes had worked. They'd taught Sarah how to intentionally put distractions aside until appropriate times. To make her attention to return to the task at hand, she would usually only have to shake her head or blink. On really bad days, she would have to tap her forehead or pinch her arm.

The distraction, however, was always the same.

That night, when she was fifteen and left at home with her infant half-brother, Sarah had indulged an exasperated whim and a rich imagination, and wished that her brother be taken away. The fact that he _had_ been had surprised her. A protective instinct and a sense of guilt had immediately formed – well, not immediately; fear of her parents' punishment had come first. In fact, the protective urge hadn't appeared until she'd laid eyes on the force that had taken Toby away – Jareth the Goblin King. The guilt waited to make itself known until she was quite firmly inside the Labyrinth.

It was difficult to remain unchanged by the threat of losing a game, losing a brother, losing her her freedom; one could not remain the same after making friends with mythological creatures and being relentlessly, if neurotically, pursued by a seductive, childish, powerful man with big hair.

This was not a story she told anyone. At best, it would have been written off as a wild yarn that Sarah had made up; they'd have encouraged her to write it down and publish it. At worst, she would have ended up in a nice little white room, flying high on a cocktail of chemicals.

Regardless, this experience distracted her every hour of every day. It did not plague her, as she looked on it as fondly as she looked on childhood. Unfortunately, it was far more influential than her childhood, and her desire to return was like the dull ache of a neglected tooth. On the worst days, it set her gasping with painful nostalgia and occasional tears. Usually, Sarah would only catch herself thinking of a pair of mismatched eyes or an endless series of hands and hands and hands. Then she would shake her head and put the images at the back of her head until she could get away somewhere by herself. Why, even today, the most persistent images were of the wild red creatures who could remove body parts and had wanted very much to remove Sarah's head; she didn't know what they were, exactly, but they looked like fiery bunnies, especially when their wild movements would set their fur to shaking.

"Well, I'm home. I'm alone," Sarah murmured into the spiced steam rising from the saucepan. The image of the fiery rabbit creatures with detachable extremities popped into her head again. She remembered their voices, shrill and flavored with improbable accents. Every last one of them could dance better than she could, Sarah recalled.

Hoggle the irascible dwarf had helped her escape from those persistent creatures. He used a rope, she remembered, wrinkling her nose. It made sense at the time, despite the fact that he never should have been able to support her weight. It was probably for the better that she hadn't thought of that at the time. Had she at any point doubted that the dwarf could lift her, she probably would have fallen to her death – or at least to a very painful set of broken bones. The Goblin King had made it quite clear that he had bent his world around her unvoiced expectations; her own childish beliefs that Hoggle was a powerful deus ex machina had been the only thing that saved her.

_He made a lot of things clear at the end, damn him,_ she thought. Her mouth curved in a slight smile. He had played a part that she'd expected him to play, so it should have been no surprise to her that he had begun monologuing when he was close to defeat. She could hardly feel genuine rage at it anymore – mild irritation perhaps, but no murderous anger.

"I suppose…" she said aloud. She paused, stirring what was now an almost finished pot of chili. "I suppose I must have forgiven him. Or maybe realized there was nothing to forgive." A laugh bubbled out of her, and she muttered, "I must have finally grown up!" And as she said it, she realized it was true in a way that turning eighteen or moving out of her parents' house had not been true.

"You _had_ to say it didn't you?"

The voice was far too familiar, though it was missing its superior drawl – the speaker was too busy being irritated to be superior. The spoon stilled, and she found that she was holding her breath. Sarah couldn't move.

"On a whim, no less," his voice continued. "_Always_ on a whim with you."

Sarah shook her head slightly and made herself stir the chili. Once, twice around the pot, the wooden spoon scraping the metal very lightly. Then, she turned slowly to face him. With only a slight tremor in her voice, she replied, "I believe that's the pot calling the kettle black, Jareth."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: LucasFilms, Henson Studios, etc. own _Labyrinth_.

* * *

Unsure of what she'd expected when or if she ever saw him again, Sarah just stood and stared.

_And why shouldn't I? He's in my home, uninvited. I can afford a little rudeness. _

They were still, she by the stove with one hand resting lightly on the counter, he with his arms crossed, leaning against the jamb of the double doors of the main kitchen entrance.

The man before her was… different. Oh, he still had that odd, languid wiriness in his body; his eyes were still mismatched. He certainly hadn't aged, and his nose was still something of a knife blade. The lips that frowned tightly at Sarah were still thin and well shaped. It was the rest of him that was different. There were no wings of color under his brows, and his hair was… smaller. The wispiness was still there, but none of the pale strands fell past his chin; it was furrowed back toward his neck, as though he'd raked his hands through his hair. The outfit could nearly pass for normal, if a bit metrosexual. The high collar of the black jerkin could have been a fitted Oxford with popped lapels; the thick weave of his gray trousers (not tights, thankfully) could have passed for jeans. The gloves were gone. Even the boots that peeked out from under the trousers were free of decoration and flamboyance.

"Are you accusing me of hypocrisy, Sarah?" Jareth's tone was carefully controlled; he managed somehow not to hiss it between his teeth.

"Yes."

…to which Jareth succinctly responded by blinking twice.

Before the Goblin King could do anything else, Sarah turned to the cabinets above the stove and started rummaging. "I doubt you're here on a social call, Goblin King." Her voice was dry. "And since I'm not going to talk… ah, 'business'… on an empty stomach, I'm going to have supper," she continued. Unwillingly, the flavor of peaches popped up from her memories Turning back around with a blue bowl in one hand and a green one in the other, Sarah offered, "You're welcome to join me. Go ahead. Have a seat."

"I'll stand, thank you."

_My, MY,_ Sarah thought, turning to retrieve a pair of spoons from the drawer on the far side of the stove. Facing a small corkboard on the wall opposite Jareth, Sarah lifted her brows upward in a sarcastic wiggle, well out of sight. _For an intruder, he's touchy!_

With a tone that was as far from offended as she could make it, Sarah said, "Well, if you'd like some chili, you're welcome to it."

"Your hospitality warms the cockles of my withered old heart," he drawled.

Since that was not technically a "no", and figuring that she'd do well not to antagonize the man who had broken into her house with magic, Sarah ladled chili into both bowls. Careful not to spill, Sarah moved the few feet to the far end of the square table, set down a full green bowl and put a spoon next to it. In silence she retrieved her own meal and sat down to eat. _He is not going to provoke me, he is not going to provoke me, _she internally chanted.

For a while, there was no noise but the sounds of spoon on ceramic and Sarah's chewing and swallowing. The Goblin King just remained leaning against the doorframe, glaring at her; he was self-consciously not fidgeting, but impatience was clear in his stance and expression. Time would've been ticking by had there been a ticking clock in Sarah's small kitchen, but the only timepiece was the magnetic digital clock/timer on the hood of the stove.

Sarah briefly considered playing with the man as her irritation began to build – she'd eat as slowly as possible or perhaps get up for a drink, as she'd forgotten to pour one at the beginning of the meal. But no – let him be the childish one. Also, she recalled her earlier caution and reminded herself not to pick fights with people who had habits of throwing magical snakes at girls.

In tones of exaggerated patience, Sarah declared, "If you're trying to make me uncomfortable at my meal, congratulations. You've succeeded." He almost smirked, and she pointed her spoon at him with a curled lip. "But I am _not_ going to hurry. We're not talking business till I've eaten. I learned that lesson the hard way, thanks. Either sit and eat or leave."

Peevishly, Jareth asked, "What would you suggest, Your Majesty?" The last part was particularly venomous. "I haven't come here for entertainment; I won't leave without what I came for."

"Look around," she bit out, trying not to glare from beneath her eyelashes. "Find a book to read. Try figuring out the television." The man's eyes narrowed, and he stalked out of the kitchen into the miniscule foyer. "Just don't touch anything!" Sarah shouted behind him, feeling silly. "I share this place with two other women, and I won't have you pawing through their stuff!"

"I'm sure I'll be able to discern between their property and yours, Sarah," came the reply, muffled and irritated.

"I think you'll be surprised," she muttered. Then she continued working on the chili. After a few moments of silence, Sarah began to worry. Dealing with Jareth, she decided belatedly, was like dealing with a child. He needed to have his way, he was easily provoked, and if she hadn't heard from him in a while, it meant there would soon be trouble. That thought made Sarah get up with her bowl of half-eaten chili and start in pursuit of the Goblin King.

She followed the way he'd gone, into the foyer, padding over the linoleum, quiet in her old sneakers. She had left the overhead light on in the living room to her right when she'd come in from school; she used the illumination to check for… well, she didn't know. Sarah didn't exactly know what to look for. The Goblin King didn't seem _quite_ childish enough to randomly break things, and picking something up and putting it back down didn't seem to be much of a punishable crime. _I suppose I'm just worried he's enchanted something, and I won't know._ Twitching her shoulders at that thought, Sarah gave the living room a once-over, decided that nothing was missing or visibly damaged, and continued her search.

A tan-and-red braided rug led from the beaten hardwood of the living room to the hallway that led to three rooms and a bathroom. Where the rug ended, another one began; this rug was a hooked-rag rug of blue and green. All the girls had brought furnishings from their dorm rooms when they'd moved in together for their senior year. Nothing in the place matched.

Sarah paused to consider why she didn't just call out to him. Arbitrarily, she rationalized that she wanted to turn the tables and sneak up on him for a change. Making good use of her sneakers and the rugs, the young woman crept up the hallway….

… and then decided that she was being silly. The hallway was only fourteen feet long, and she'd already passed Marianne's room. The bathroom was to her right, and she poked her head in… just in case.

"When, exactly, will you be ready for 'business', Sarah?" The woman stiffened in surprise. His question had come from the hall behind her and to the right, and when she shifted her eyes to the left, she could see him in the bathroom mirror. Undoubtedly, he was enjoying her blush – he'd sneaked up on her again! Her brows came up, and her eyes narrowed; with this haughty expression on her face, Sarah turned to him with her bowl held before her like a shield. Then she ate a defiant spoonful.

Jareth leaned forward, as he had done when he'd once asked, "What do you think of my Labyrinth?". Sarah tensed but kept chewing; she would be damned if he was going to come into her home and intimidate her. The man just responded with a scornful glare, as though to point up her immaturity.

With an uplifted eyebrow, Sarah inquired politely, "Did you figure out which room was mine, then?"

He blinked slowly, as if he were exasperated by a particularly slow child; then he turned in the bathroom doorway and pointed an elegant finger straight at Sarah's bedroom.

"Really," she muttered. A few steps took her past Jareth and to the threshold of her room. Sarah reached her spoon-holding hand around the doorjamb and flicked on the light, asking dryly, "What would possibly make you think that?" And she cast a narrow look around at her possessions.

There was a great difference between the room of her childhood and her current abode. For one, there wasn't a shelf full of teddy bears. The posters on her wall now were of costumes from history, stage, and screen. The books on her shelves ranged from world religions to chemistry, past fantasy to graphic design – they weren't wholly a collection of romantic fantasies and overworn fiction, though those genres were represented. The bed was a sensible second-hand double, and the comforter had a stylish blue-and-green angular design. Any doodads she had were carefully and cleanly displayed.

Jareth moved past her, carefully not touching her, and crossed the room in four strides. His long, pale fingers plucked a decorated music box from its place among other figurines and containers. Tonelessly, he observed, "You live with women who share your new tastes. You seem… very alike." He turned mismatched eyes on her, and Sarah thought there might be a hint of reproach in the gaze. But the look softened, and he added quietly, "But neither of them had a music box with a princess in white on it."

Sarah sighed and turned to set her food on a blue dresser by her door. She turned back just in time to see Jareth preparing to turn the key that would set the music box to playing. Though she wanted to snatch the thing and hide it somewhere dark and inaccessible, Sarah came forward saying quietly, "I couldn't bear to get rid of it." And although she was gentle when she brushed Jareth's fingers away from the key, Sarah's fingers went white at the knuckles as they closed around the music box. Her right palm curled protectively over the winding key as she retreated a couple of steps. "But it hasn't played since… I returned."

Beyond the silence that fell, Sarah was aware of Jareth's watching her staring at the music box. She traced the flaking gold leafed trim with one thumb, aware that the time for playing was done. Damn him for still being able to disarm her.

"One thing," Sarah said in an almost defeated voice. "Was – was everything in the Underground false? All pulled from my room?" Here, she lifted the music box in both hands like an offering, and her face was already broken with knowing despair. "Was any of it true?"

Jareth stared at her as if unsure of how to answer. His lips worked against each other, trying to form words and then failing. Eventually he turned from Sarah and showed her his profile; before she could take that as an answer, he reminded her tightly, "The Underground is magic, Sarah." His eyes slid closed; the marble-pale skin stilled and smoothed out, getting rid of any telling creases of anger or sadness. This time, his voice was cool and controlled when he said, "Though your mundane upbringing doesn't allow you to credit what you see there, everything in the Underground is real.

"Just because it is foreign, that doesn't mean that it's… false." The tone was thoughtful and searching until the last word. That word was final, almost accusatory.

Sarah knew that things were getting to close to… well, to _something_. She knew that if she kept talking to Jareth about reality and falsehood and magic, they'd fight or something equally bad. More, she felt a blush coming on. So she turned, traded the music box for the chili, and flicked the light switch. "Come on," she said, her tone not quite commanding. "Let's talk at the table." Without waiting for response – she was retreating, though she'd only admit it to herself – Sarah returned to the kitchen.

Once there, Sarah offered the second chair to Jareth again with a wave of one hand; she sat in the chair she'd occupied earlier. It creaked. Jareth's wobbled, but he did not react; in fact, he propped one ankle on the opposite knee and leaned back. After a short moment of uncomfortable silence, Sarah coughed and began, "What do y- " She almost said, "What do you want with me?" But then she thought back to her bedroom and decided to reword. "Why are you here, Goblin King?" She wanted to add some smart aleck remarks about wishes and babies, but she felt suddenly weary and began to massage her brow. _I'm ready for him to leave,_ she decided. Nostalgia was preferable to the present reality, it seemed.

"Your… directness is refreshing, Sarah," he remarked, his voice wry and cool. "But it just won't do."

The wood grain of the old secondhand table was rough under Sarah's left hand where it rested on the edge. She resisted gripping the wood. She refused to react, except to stop rubbing her forehead. "I am a college senior," she bit out. "Directness serves me just fine. In fact, it's preferable."

"It's not where you'll be going."

An edge of fear or irritation – it was too early to tell – crept into Sarah's voice now. "Where I'll be going is back and forth between class, the theater, and home." Slowly, so as not to show fear or discomfort, she released the table and put her hands in her lap. The fingers laced together, and she said, "I think you need to come to your point now, please."

A sigh. He leaned forward and crossed his arms on the edge of the table. "You're the Queen of the Goblins now."

Deciding between laughter and anger was really difficult for Sarah. She was sure her face, mobile and telling as it was, showed a very strange combination of emotions at that point. Her jaw worked helplessly up and down for a moment before she could form words. Through an airy burst of exasperated laughter, Sarah declared, "Either that's the clumsiest marriage proposal in history, or I'm missing something important." Sarcastically, she added, "Do you mind clarifying?" Panic was curled up somewhere below her bellybutton, but it was threatening to come out.

Jareth's face showed some strain, as though he were trying not to roll his eyes. His voice, too, was strained when he replied with some attempt at politeness, "Those who solve the Labyrinth gain the throne of the Goblin Kingdom. If they're und-"

"What kind of prize is that?" she interrupted before even thinking about it. The man across the table straightened up, and his face went as still as a mask. Sarah could feel a blush rising toward her hairline, but since she'd already offended him – that much was clear – she decided to plow on with an apologetic glance. "I saw how that place was. Gorgeous but overgrown; full of stupid, harmless, ugly goblins; and run by a man who cared more about his own amusement than about the safety of anyone else. You said that everything in the Underground is real, so did I miss when the throne room was clean or when the city or Labyrinth weren't a complete wreck?" Sarah's voice hit an uncomfortable pitch; she didn't like watching Jareth as he got more offended, and she just couldn't keep her mouth shut. Shoving away from the table, jolting Jareth in the process, Sarah jerked to her feet and started pacing the two feet between the stove and the side entrance to the kitchen.

She heard the other chair scrape back and clatter to the floor. "All of that was for you!" Jareth snapped. Sarah struck the stovetop with a closed fist and whirled on him.

"Are we back to that, then?" she shouted. "I didn't ask for you to fuck things up for my benefit! I didn't say, 'Oh, King, would you please make me as uncomfortable as a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL can get?'? _I never wished for you to move the stars!"_

This seemed the wrong thing to say. Finally, Jareth went red and slammed his hand down on the table, making it slump to the side. "That's not how the spell _works!_" he roared.

"_Spell?_"

Sarah froze; she could feel the blood drain from her face, and her head seemed to shake 'no' without her consent. _No, oh, no, oh, no_, her brain chanted

"Oh, yes," Jareth purred, his right palm still planted on the creaking table. "_Now_ she gets it." His face twisted into its more familiar, most menacing slow smile. "Are the rest of the pieces falling into place? Everything is real in the Underground and especially in the Labyrinth. Everything can change and becomes real in response to the wisher's subconscious. The Labyrinth – and its _King_ –" His voice hissed here "- are spellbound to obey."

Sarah felt sick. Her knees – and she'd never known that this cliché was real – felt weak and threatened to drop her right there. Leaning back for support, she found herself up against the corkboard and a handful of tacks. Ignoring them, she gurgled, "It begins only when you say the words to wish someone away…?" Saying it, she knew it wasn't true.

Jareth's smile was thin and cruel, half mocking and half self-mocking. The wisps of hair falling near his cheekbones waved in counterpoint to the side-to-side shake of his head. "Oh, no, _dear_ girl. Context is _everything_."

With a visceral attempt to retreat, Sarah dug back into the corkboard. Several of the tacks bent under the pressure and twisted to present their points to her flesh. The discomfort and the knowledge that her shirt would be bloodstained did nothing to distract her. The next words he said would break her.

In the quietest voice, in the most poisonous tone, he finished, "That charming little story you told to charming little Toby that night forced me to irretrievably love you."

The only things Sarah could think of were as follows:

How would she keep from bursting into confused tears?

And:

Since fainting was way too dramatic, could she get away with running?

Neither seemed wise. So Sarah remained as she was, pushing herself against the corkboard and ignoring the metal digging into her back. It took a moment for her to realize that she was staring with painfully bugged eyes at Jareth and hyperventilating. Her blood returned to her face in a blush, and she dropped her chin to her chest, allowing the hair to swing forward in a curtain. She didn't want to see the expression on his face. Worse, she didn't want him to see the mixture of despair, terror, and hope on _hers_.

Finally, through suppressed tears, she rasped, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry – so so so sorry. God, how you must hate me." She shoved off the wall and didn't let him answer. "What we'll do, then, is go back to the Underground and let you run the Labyrinth. I won't interfere; you'll beat it and get your throne back, yes? Yes." Sarah refused to look at him, and she turned to the second entrance to the kitchen with her fingers buried in her hair. "As long as you don't expect me to interfere, right? That's how the spell works? So don't expect me to interfere. I'm gonna go get a change of clothes and a book to read while you're gone, and a toothbrush, and –"

And suddenly, he was in front of her and pulling her hands away from her face. "Did you not hear me?" he asked in the gentlest voice Sarah had heard him use. "I said that I loved you."

Ineffectually tugging against his grip and looking stoically at his chest, she replied, "You also said 'forced' and 'irretrievably'. We'll go, we'll fix this, and you'll be free." After a moment, however, she realized that her efforts to free her wrists were not working; of course, then she realized that he wasn't letting go.

"Please don't," she whispered, and because he misunderstood _why_ – the sudden tenseness in his hands communicated that much – she continued urgently, "It's too soon – too much too soon. Just – please…"

Jareth drew in a breath through his nose and sighed, "You've only just let yourself see." His voice deepened – "I have been _waiting_ –"

"You will have to wait some more," insisted Sarah, finally looking up to his face. She did so in time to catch the brief appearance of pain and disappointment that shut his eyes and curled his lip. Then, he released her wrists and started to turn away.

Immediately, Sarah grabbed _his_ wrists and dragged him back to her and almost under his nose, she hissed, "Why can't you understand that you terrify me?"

Jareth was actually taken aback – he literally retreated half a step, and his eyes widened minutely.

"Oh, yes," she said, almost bitterly mimicking his earlier words, "Now _you_ start to understand. I'm twenty-one years old; I'm a human, Jareth. The only person I share any real love with is Toby." She paused here, unsure of where to go after that. Letting the silence stretch, Sarah watched a thoughtful crease form between those upswept brows.

She continued, "Despite the fact that you have –"

- At those words, Jareth jerked back and his face closed up, returning to the marble mask that hid pain or offense. He heard the words, "You have…" and Sarah realized that she must have been close to finishing, "…no power over me."

Well, maybe she had, and maybe she hadn't.

"_You've_ just said that I'm a queen now, that I have power…" Sarah swallowed and made herself keep her gaze locked with his. "You – you're just as frightening as before." In the following silence, Sarah realized that she was still pretty firmly attached to Jareth's wrists. Carefully, deliberately, she lowered his arms and released them, repeating gently, "_Too soon_."

"Then when?" The question was hardly even a sigh.

Unable, for any inducement on earth, to break eye contact, Sarah did sigh. "When you're not scary anymore."

"After altering my entire world to suit you, you would have me destroy some part of _myself_ that you don't want – that you can't even _identify_?" Jareth demanded. A spark of irritation returned to his voice.

"I would have you wait!" Sarah insisted, the same anger echoing in her tone. Both her hands were in front of her, stuck halfway between a pleading gesture and reaching for his throat. "I don't want to crush you! I just want to be able to defend myself!"

"From what?" he snapped. Clearly, Jareth was exasperated and nearing anger again; spots of color started to rise in his cheeks, and long lines formed between his brows. "In your words, I don't want to crush _you_! I mean you no harm – where do you keep getting that idea?"

"Harm me? No! You want to own me! I seem to remember notions of domination!" Sarah rolled up onto the balls of her feet and quoted, "'Let me rule you. Love me, fear me, do as I say…'"

"'And I will be your slave!'" he finished. "I offered you the same in return!"

"I don't want a slave, Jareth! I want a partner! A _friend!_" Sarah's voice finally reached a shriek; her hands were curled into claws at her sides, and her shoulders rose up around her ears. "That is not what love is about! That is not what a relationship is about! It's not some… some confederacy of servitude! _I will not be owned!_"

Silently thanking her improv and speech professors for a quick, oratorical response, Sarah saw his eyes widen, and all the rage drain from his face; Sarah thought she saw understanding there.

But then in a voice as pleasant and impersonal as a telemarketer's, he replied, "You're right. You're too young to know anything of love. You only have twenty-one years of life and none of experience." Before Sarah could take offense – and she was offended, as any college senior would be upon being called inexperienced – Jareth held out his right hand. "Come. It's time to go."

Deciding not to press the point just now, Sarah reminded him sullenly, "My stuff…?"

"You will want for nothing in the castle."

"Just _one_ thing," she ground out. "A touch of home to comfort me while there."

"Tell me what it is, Your Majesty, and I will retrieve it for you." Surprisingly, there was no mockery in his voice. Jareth's deference was utterly genuine. Sarah repressed a shudder.

In the wake of the argument and revelation of her new status – as well as Jareth's sudden coolness and the reminder of their having to leave – all Sarah could think of was curling up and hiding somewhere. Dully, she replied, "My blanket, from my bed." As an afterthought – "Please."

He bowed from the waist, his hand still extended. His gloveless hand was warm and dry, and the fingers curled delicately around Sarah's.

The world turned, just as it had when Sarah had last been brought to the Labyrinth. Only this time, when everything stilled, she was facing a familiar castle and its formidable scaled doors.

"Wha- ?" She turned, confused, to the man beside her.

He released her hand and took half a step back. "Only the ruler can magic hi- herself into her castle." Sarah could only barely detect a hint of bitterness in his tone; his face betrayed nothing. "I've plenty of natural power, but to enter this place in such a manner without being its master…" Smile lines became briefly visible beside his eyes. "At the very least, it would be incredibly rude."

"I don't know how to use magic. I don't _have_ magic. _Human_," Sarah reminded him. She sure as hell couldn't push it open; it had required Ludo the gigantic monster last time.

"On the contrary, Your Majesty," he said, smirking. "If you would, please approach the doors." Jareth bowed to her again – _Jareth! Goblin King Jareth! Bowing!_ she thought with a sense of vertigo – and gestured smoothly to the doors.

She turned and took two hesitant steps. On the third step, the enormous doors swung silently open before her. The chamber beyond the doors was clean and bright, and Sarah caught a glimpse of what must be the throne, and she suddenly realized that she was hyperventilating for the second time in ten minutes.

"Sarah?" Jareth murmured in tones of concern. He was right at her elbow, close but not touching.

"I -" she choked, "I need a private room or something. Not the throne room, not here." The woman took a step back and wrapped her arms around her ribs. Her voice went up half an octave; she squeaked almost matter-of-factly, "I'm having a panic attack, and – and I need to break down in private, please."

Worry lines furrowed Jareth's brow. Lifting his right hand as though to touch her, he answered, "I can't, not without leading you on foot. This place is not mine anymo-"

"I'm giving you permission!' Sarah interrupted, curling a little tighter into herself. "It's _my_ home now, right? Well, you can magic around here." _Magic_ had the taste of a verb, of _action_ in her mouth. "Please," she wheezed. "I'm begging you."

He sighed, "You're going to regret that. I know you are." Regardless, the man placed his hands on Sarah's shoulders and propelled her across the threshold of the Castle Beyond the Goblin City.

The world turned one more time, and the surroundings resolved themselves into a handsomely appointed bedchamber. Jareth released her and stepped to the side, every bit the respectful servant.

The dominant colors of the chamber were gold and white, a detail that Sarah processed while collapsing backward. Happily, there was a bed to catch her. _How thoughtful of Jareth to place me here,_ she reflected through a haze of terror. The gasps of breath were quickly beginning to sound like hysterical giggles, and Sarah started shivering.

Jareth shifted, a movement Sarah heard rather than saw; a moment later, a weight dropped over her head and shoulders, framing the room before her with a soft teardrop shape. A whiff of scent curled around her; the smell was a comfortingly foul mix of her own body smell, rabbit urine, and old books.

With shaking hands, Sarah drew her blanket closer around her and was able, for the first time in a minute – quite a long time! – to take a full breath. Another one followed the first.

Then Sarah pulled the blanket completely over her head and burst into tears.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I have no claim to Labyrinth or its effects; I play with them for fun.

* * *

Resisting the urge to sigh, Jareth reflected that perhaps he should have expected a reaction like this. His Sarah was different now that she'd matured, in good ways and in bad. When he had spied on her from time to time – and he had… one called a wand a wand – he'd seen her gradually change. What had once been whim and impulse had become thoughtfulness and caution. These were adult attributes, which allowed her to make good decisions and to be a decent person. The downside was that they resulted in her being less and less adaptive.

_And honestly_, he thought,_ to what can one adapt in such a dead, dull world?_

War, for instance. There were wars Aboveground, but the dead rarely surpassed the population of a few cities; Underground wars were fought with magic and steel, and entire countries spilled their blood. Jareth considered crime, rolling his eyes. The Aboveground had a natural amount of crime, but Sarah had lived a life privileged enough that she'd not had to come into contact with it. Food and entertainment were plentiful for all but the most poverty-stricken; Underground nobles and landed gentry were the only ones who could afford such leisure. There was very little, comparatively, to which Sarah had had to react. Education had been her only stimulus, for which Jareth was grateful. Hopefully, Sarah was still open to new ideas and still had a lively imagination.

Elsewise, all was lost.

The weeping had by now dwindled into hiccups and snuffling. With a turn of his wrist, Jareth produced a clean handkerchief and dangled it in front of the head-shape under the blue-and-green blanket. _Gods, it reeks, _he noted_. It's a wonder she can stand to smother herself with it._

"Sarah," he gently called. In response, his unwilling successor curled more tightly into herself. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Jareth snapped, "Sarah. Don't be a child. Open up."

An affronted silence passed, and then Sarah sat up and threw the blanket off her head. This released another whiff of the perfume that was dominated by male rabbit urine; Jareth carefully kept his face still. Silently, the woman glared up at Jareth with red-rimmed eyes.

The sight chilled Jareth to the core, even as it set his heart racing. _Still so cruel,_ his mind whispered. And after such a rejection as he had received not ten minutes ago, Jareth found he could not hold her gaze. Instead, he lifted the handkerchief between them and focused on that. It was unbleached, finely woven linen, and it was completely unwrinkled. And if you knew anything about linen, then you knew that the lack of wrinkles or creases was quite a feat. _Even to wipe the mucus off of her nose, _he thought wryly,_ I offer her the best._

This tableau remained far longer than was strictly necessary. Jareth had thought the girl would relent eventually, but as that turned out not to be the case, he began to get a touch exasperated. An idea struck him, and it was all he could do not to smirk.

"Well!" he drawled. "If that's how you're going to be…"

He bent at the waist again, reached out, and proceeded to wipe Sarah's nose, as motherly as you please. She made wonderfully offended noises, and they took on a honking quality when he pinched the end of her nose. Jareth merrily ignored her protests until she clamped down on his wrist with one hand and snatched away the handkerchief with the other.

"Dammit, Jareth, stop!" she shouted, hauling herself to her feet, using his wrist as leverage. Her eyes went wide when, even with all her weight depending from his wrist, Jareth was as steady as a marble column. She stared, startled, and he lifted an eyebrow in response.

Stuttering, she huffed, "Ho-honestly." She released him, rolling those handsome green eyes. "You accuse me of being childish! Geez!" There was a clean corner of the handkerchief, and she used that to scrub at her eyes. She then honked once into the middle of the cloth and balled it up. Then, she looked helplessly up at Jareth and demanded, "Well, now what am I supposed to do with it?"

He decided to limit his commentary to only one lifted eyebrow. Silently, the former king extended his hand. Something in him rebelled at this, that part of him that was once a lord, and lately a king – but there was another part of him that enjoyed the look of horror on Sarah's face. The child in him reveled in her reaction – any reaction at all.

"Aaaugh…" she answered. The handkerchief went behind her back. "Jareth, that's gross. Isn't there a dirty laundry hamper or something?"

Amused, he replied, "Usually, we tuck them into our sleeves or pockets, for use later." His own hand fell back to his side, and Sarah's face wrinkled into a predictable grimace. "One as soiled as yours either gets tossed into some corner for a servant to collect, or it is handed directly to a servant. Then it goes to the laundry."

"Ew," was the heartfelt reply. "No one should have to handle someone else's snot, Jareth. Can't I magic it clean? Or… something?"

Trying – and failing – not to laugh, he answered, "That is a monumental waste of talent and effort, Sarah."

"See, this is why we invented Kleenex," she retorted. She brought her hand back in front of her and asked, "Well, can I at least dry it first?"

Jareth extended his hand once more, and with a smile, told her, "It would only make it harder to clean. Stop resisting and indulge in this necessity, like all the other nobility." He wriggled his long fingers invitingly at her. He was gratified when she snickered. Oh, this was worth it, disgust and dignity be damned.

"D'you have another handkerchief?" was her next question.

Another twist of his hand resulted in another linen handkerchief. Again it was unwrinkled. She took it, wrapped it around the soiled one, and offered it back to Jareth. The courtesy, odd as it was, touched him; he decided that she couldn't know that. Expressionlessly, he twisted a bit of magic, and both the cloths disappeared from his hand and landed on a pile of laundry several floors below them.

Another silence passed; Sarah broke it by asking, "So… what now? We're back, I've panicked, and now I smell like rabbit pee." Her arms were crossed protectively before her; his were clasped easily behind him.

"Bathe."

Sarah glared again, only half-seriously this time. "How timely and diplomatic of you," she drawled. "After that?"

"Launder that blanket." The corner of his mouth twitched.

"After _that?_" she asked. Her glare was even less serious than before.

Suddenly very grim, Jareth paused and slowly answered, "You decide what to do with the deposed king."

Then he had the stones to teleport out of the room as soon as "king" had passed his lips and no amount of shouting on Sarah's part was bringing him back.

* * *

He'd been right, she admitted – Sarah suddenly did regret giving him permission to perform magic in the castle. It was with a cold sense of certainty that Sarah thought, _He's going to get out of so many arguments because of that._

"Dammit," she muttered. And how was she going to launder the blanket or take a bath without Jareth's assistance? _That came out wrong,_ she reprimanded herself, turning red. What she meant was that Jareth had been the only person she'd seen, due to her panic attack, and without him to show her around, she was going to have to actually take up this mantle of royalty – _Only for a little while!_ – and go find a servant.

The idea made her thoroughly middle-class American theatre-student skin crawl.

But since there was no other option, really, Sarah squared her shoulders and strode into the hall in search of someone to show her around.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Hensons, etc. own _Labyrinth._

_

* * *

_

It took Sarah approximately forty-five seconds to get thoroughly lost. She'd found the doors to the bedchamber, turned left, walked to the first cross-hallway, and turned right. Lovely, ancient stone wall followed lovely, ancient stone arrow slit followed lovely, ancient tapestry over and over. Five seconds later, she'd found that she'd gone in a circle, and that the first hallway was no longer there. Needless to say, this did not improve her mood. She had no string or lipstick or anything that could leave a mark, and her last experience here had proven that it probably would've been useless, anyway. Shouting for Jareth still wasn't working, and there was no one else responding to her yelling, either. She'd tried to sound, by turns, commanding, wheedling, taunting, and desperate. All attempts yielded nothing.

Eventually, Sarah got hoarse and began to search for stairs. _I'll even take a ladder, if it will get me somewhere I recognize!_ she decided, rubbing a spot above her nose. What wasn't helping the situation was the rapidly developing headache that focused between her brows.

"Jareth, where are you?" she sighed. She was leaning against the wall near the royal chambers, massaging her head. Nothing happened. "I need you." Nothing. "Hoggle, Sir Didymus, Ludo – I need you. I need someone. Anyone." Still nothing. "Dammit, I'm the Queen, here! Doesn't that count for something? Somebody had better get out here, now, before I get really angry!"

As the echoes diminished, Sarah heard a shuffling noise from down the hall, and she muttered, "About time." Upon turning toward the noise, she found herself looking down at a squat, pudgy creature with jowls like a hound dog and a Viking helmet. Sarah noted that the hat was not worn on the head but on the rear end of the creature; it was strapped on over the stained, ratty brown tunic the creature wore.

"Hello," she said.

In response, the goblin – what else could it be? – dropped to its knees and started wailing, "Aaaaiieee! ! I ain't done nothin'! 'msorry!" This plea, uttered in a pitch just short of a dog whistle, was followed by incoherent blubbering and shuddering and hiccupping.

"Whoa, calm down!" Sarah cried, making a shushing gesture with both hands. "I didn't say you did anything!"

This prompted another frightened howl, this time punctuated with snorts and tears, and Sarah couldn't decide between worry and disgust.

She did, however, know that she was losing patience.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Bending over and lightly touching the goblin's shoulder, she cooed, "Calm down. You're not in trouble."

To her astonishment, her touch instantly stilled the creature's shuddering and hiccupping… for about three seconds. Suddenly, the goblin leaped backward and landed against the wall, awkwardly perched on its Viking-horned pants. Then it started kicking uselessly at the air, attempting to regain its feet.

Realizing that it was trapped by its own clothing, the goblin let out a shriek that topped all the others and went positively gray with terror.

This was the point at which Sarah began to understand the Goblin King part of Jareth, sour temper and all.

"Quiet!"

Silence fell.

"…please," she added, out of habit.

Luckily, the silence stayed right where it had fallen, and the goblin remained still. Sarah stepped forward but stopped short when the goblin's watery green eyes widened, and it resumed shuddering. She squatted where she was, instead, and waited for the goblin to calm itself again.

Once she felt it was safe to speak again, Sarah offered, "Let's start again, okay?" A tremulous nod answered her. "Good. I'm Sarah. What's your name?"

"Purt, Y-y-yer Majes-t-t-t-y," it replied in a hoarse whisper.

"Hi, Purt." Sarah pushed aside her discomfort at the royal address in favor of getting answers. "I'm kind of lost. Do you think you could help me?"

The goblin stuttered a little more, its face slowly regaining its healthier mottled green color. "I- I- dunno, Yer Muh-Majesty. I ain't tha-that smart. Dunno nuh-nuthin'."

"Don't be silly," Sarah cooed, her gentle tone not matching her impatience. "You know where you are, right?"

"The castle."

"Yes. The castle. Where in the castle, Purt?"

"The fuh-fourth floor."

"Good, good. Do you know how to get to the throne room from here?"

Its face scrunched up, all the flesh pulling toward the nose in great, deep wrinkles. "Uhm…"

Good lord, it was easier to get Ludo to answer intelligently! Sarah resisted the urge to massage her forehead again. The headache was slowly worsening. It was only by the greatest exertion of willpower that she managed not to rush the goblin. Having dealt with Toby in a recalcitrant mood, Sarah felt that pushing Purt would only send it back into hysterics. So she waited.

And waited.

And realized that Purt had forgotten the question.

And slapped herself in the forehead, which worsened the headache.

"Purt."

The goblin started, finally wobbling off its Viking-pantsed perch with a _thump!_ It immediately jumped up and started bowing and wringing its knobby-knuckled hands. "Y-Yer Majesty?" An odd gurgling noise came from the goblin, and it self-consciously wrapped an arm around its middle. A blush rose in Purt's hound dog jowls – rather, Sarah thought that it was a blush; the mottled green skin went a few shades darker.

An idea. "Purt, do you think you could show me the kitchen?"

"Yer Majesty!" Purt popped to attention and turned right around. "If Yer Majesty'll foller me!" it burbled over its shoulder. Then it took off at a trot, and Sarah went after it in long strides.

This go 'round, the corridor ended with a T-intersection, and when Purt and Sarah took the right hand branch, she could easily see a stairwell at the end. It was not grand or even very clean; it was humble and rickety and clearly a servant's stair. Sarah found that she didn't care. It went down. As they followed the stairs, Sarah tried not to touch anything; this might have compromised Sarah's balance and safety, but the lack of a handrail and the nondescript green smears of something on the walls made the risk her only choice. And although she wasn't prone to klutziness, Sarah did stumble a few times, missing a stair here or there. Each step wasn't uniform, and a wisp of a history lesson rose in her mind – something concerning uneven steps making it harder for invading forces to navigate.

In the middle of this memory, Sarah stumbled off the final stair to find herself in yet another corridor, though this one was darker, not so pretty, and which smelled of cooking meat. Purt scurried ahead. The goblin clearly forgot all about her and was around a bend before Sarah could do more than think of running after it.

"Hey!" she shouted, pounding toward the bend in the hall where she'd last seen Purt. As she made the turn, the scent of cooking meat vanished, and she pulled up just short of plowing face-first into a solid stone wall.

"DAMN!" The sound of her shout was followed by the soft slap of skin on stone. "Damn," she said again, cradling her stinging right hand. Sarah turned and discovered that the bend in the hall was gone, replaced by an interminably long stretch of corridor, punctuated only by flickering, smoking torches. Through her rising rage and blinding headache, Sarah had the distinct feeling that she was being toyed with. And frankly, to Sarah, it made perfect sense to blame the only person who had a reason to play games with her.

"Damn it, Jareth!" she shouted once more and struck the wall.

With a nearly deafening roar and to her great shock, the stones before her exploded outward. A part of her noticed that her headache suddenly lessened. Another part of her registered that her hands were glowing with a misty blue light. But most of her mind focused on the thin, pale figure that was seated on an upside down staircase across a room pulled from M.C. Escher's head.

"You!" Sarah's fists balled at her sides. The headache rose again, though less powerfully than before.

Jareth's eyes widened only a little. Then a smirk replaced the surprise, and he inquired, "Redecorating already, Your Majesty?" He looked down – or up? – at the shattered stones that littered the landing of a staircase far below Sarah's feet. The landing itself appeared to Sarah to be lying on its side on the distant floor. The stones, then, seemed to be sticking impossibly to one side of the vertical landing.

Ignoring the headache that increased upon her contemplating the physics of the Escher room, Sarah snapped, "What did you do to the castle?"

"'Do'?"

"You were right about me regretting the decision to let you do magic here! I knew you weren't the best sport, Jareth, but I didn't think you'd stoop to booby trapping the place when someone took over!" she shouted. She looked down, not waiting for Jareth's response, and tried to step up onto the end of a set of stairs that clung to the wall she'd just blown a hole into.

Then gravity went crooked, and Sarah started falling up. With a terrified shriek, she scrabbled at the wall behind her and barely managed to kick her feet above her head just in time to land on yet another stone slab. She blinked at the wall in front of her, panting.

"That," Jareth pointed out some distance above and behind her, "was not my fault."

Sarah turned on still-wobbly legs. She saw that she was now oriented the same way that Jareth was, but he was now several dozen feet above her. "I wasn't talking about that! I was talking about the fourth floor hallway, and the one near the kitchen!"

With a frown, Jareth got to his feet, walked down a few steps, and went through the archway he found there. The sound of footsteps shifted from twenty feet over Sarah's head to just underfoot. Sarah craned her neck to see underneath the landing; she caught a glimpse of Jareth's upside-down back. He was hurrying down the stairs attached to Sarah's landing – or, rather, he was walking up the stairs that, from Sarah's perspective, were going down. Stuck somewhere between anger and apprehension, she moved to the edge of the top step and waited.

The footsteps paused, and the toe of a black boot came into view at the bottom of the stairs. Defying all logic, the sole of the boot swung up and over the edge of the stair, and the rest of Jareth followed, as though he were a trapdoor hinged to the step. There he stopped, hands folded behind his back, one hip cocked.

"Now, what's this about hallways?" he asked with one eyebrow raised.

Automatically on the defense, Sarah crossed her arms and cocked her hip, too. "Oh, so careful! What, didn't want to frighten me, Jareth? Didn't want to do that trick with the floor up here?" She jerked her chin toward her own feet.

His eyebrow crept higher. "No, honestly. You've clearly decided, for some unfathomable reason, that I'm responsible for some prank, and you are literally glowing with raw magic." The eyebrow joined its brother in a slight frown. "I've no death wish."

_Wait, 'glowing'?_ Sarah's memory pricked her, and she lifted her hands before her. There, wafting just a couple of inches from her skin, was that misty blue light she'd barely noticed before. She felt herself go pale, and her stomach curled in on itself, threatening to jettison the chili from earlier. In response, the blue light brightened and took to flickering wildly.

"Shit," was the only comment she could manage.

"Brevity is, indeed, the soul of wit," Jareth muttered, rolling his eyes. "_Humans_."

* * *

Jareth took a carefully slow step forward, just to the edge of the lowest stair, and said Sarah's name. He had to repeat it twice before he could get her to focus on him rather than her hands. Then he considered how to word his instructions. Sarah had proven herself, many times, to be the type to jump to conclusions; she was touchy and quick to anger, and the last thing he needed was for her to turn her ire on him. Well, turn it on him again – this time, she was aware of the magic and was unlikely to stop at shouting, and Jareth was certain he'd fare about as well as the wall that she'd shattered.

"Calmness is the quickest way to control the magic," he finally said.

"Calm?" she squawked. He winced, and knew he'd chosen the wrong words. Again. "I'm glowing, and you tell me to be _calm?_"

Jareth resisted the need to roll his eyes again. "I did not. I only told you the key to addressing your problem."

_"Jareth!"_ Her voice went up in both volume and pitch.

Only the willpower that had been honed by thousands of years of trials, intrigues, wars, and crises kept Jareth from rolling his eyes. Trying for a soothing tone, he answered, "Just try. If you're in a state, you won't be able to exert control."

"I'll show you 'in a state'!" The light flared again, and Sarah backed up a few startled steps, her anger temporarily forgotten.

This time, he couldn't help it. He rolled his eyes. In fact, it felt so right that he did it again and pinched the bridge of his nose just for effect. Acidly, he informed his new sovereign, "Even the act of attempting calm with yield results. Just breathe."

Sarah's eyebrows snapped together in a glower, and she opened her mouth to shout.

"Breathe," he commanded, forestalling the tirade she was about to release, and Sarah sucked in a surprised lungful of air.

The fact that she obeyed betrayed her terror. Had she been in any better state of mind, she'd have continued arguing. Of course, had she been in any better state of mind, he wouldn't have had to order her so.

Another gulp of air followed the first, and then another. Upon the fourth such breath, the light around her fists stopped flickering. Now fascinated, Sarah watched as, with each now-meditative inhale, the light diminished into nothing. She let her fists uncurl and continued the breathing pattern even after the raw magic had retreated far enough to take her headache away.

Once the glow had died, Jareth had started walking slowly up the stairs. He stopped three steps below Sarah and just watched her gaze at her relaxed palms as though she were in a trance. The lines of pain and anger had smoothed out of her forehead, and the fine tremors that had come over her once she realized that she was alight with magic were gone. And as pleasant as it would be to join Sarah in examining her long-fingered, elegant, well-kept hands, Jareth kept his gaze locked on her eyes. Beyond even his concern, he was just as satisfied looking at her eyes as anything else. While she let him, he would continue to do so.

Far too soon, Sarah let her hands fall to her sides, and she looked up. She jumped only slightly upon seeing Jareth so close, his eyes on a level with hers. Annoyance, embarrassment, and discomfort flitted across her face before Sarah turned to sit at the edge of the landing. Her long legs dangled over the edge of the stone slab, and the Escher room's twisted gravity pulled at her feet, pinning them to the other side.

After heaving a long sigh, she said, "Thanks."

"I am always at your service, Your Majesty." The tone was only slightly mocking, and he bowed, sinking from there into a sitting position. He sat on the third step down, his back against the wall, his boots sticking out into the air. Conflicting gravities pulled at his feet, making them twitch.

Silence reigned a few moments more. Jareth waited, watching the Goblin Queen from the corner of his eye. It was against all etiquette to question the ruler; normally this wouldn't have bothered Jareth, even this afternoon, after he'd finally lost his position. He was understood to be only selectively deferent in the Underground. However, having seen Sarah blow a Ludo-sized hole in the wall of what should have been an impenetrable room – and knowing that she was angry at him for something he most certainly didn't do – Jareth was unwilling to break her reverie.

Besides, with her back turned, she couldn't watch him watching her.

"Sorry." She still faced away from him, but she spoke to him, all the same. The tone was wavering with the failed effort not to sound begrudging.

It took a moment for the word to register. "Royalty doesn't apologize," he demurred, secretly pleased by the gesture, however unwilling it was.

This time she turned; she glared wearily. "This one does." She pulled her legs into a tailor's seat with some difficulty and scooted back against the wall. "I have a habit of making assumptions. That got me into enough trouble the first time. You'd think I'd have learned something from it." This time, she managed to sound more sincere.

No safe answer there. Jareth almost wished that Sarah wasn't being so reasonable. A good battle of wits would set them both to rights, he believed.

"So," she eventually sighed. "What might have made the halls shift around like the Labyrinth did?" At his questioning glance, Sarah elaborated, "I took a left out of the door, went down a hall, and ended up where I started. Tried it again, and it had changed."

A pause. "Ah." He began staring out into the open air, too.

"Ah?"

A small smile this time. "I realize now why you incorrectly thought I was behind it." The smile grew into a grin. "To be fair, I wasn't behind the Labyrinth's antics, either."

"No?"

"No. The Labyrinth has a mind of its own, of sorts."

She frowned. Then she glared into the middle distance and muttered, "Oh, great. Maze with a brain. Lovely."

Jareth managed not to laugh, though he wanted to because that had been his own opinion some five thousand years ago. "Almost," he replied, the smile still in his voice. Sarah looked sharply at him, and he held up one hand in gentle protest. "It's beside the point, however. It should not be happening here."

"Why is it?"

He sighed. "Perhaps it doesn't recognize you as its master yet. Perhaps because your magic hadn't manifested, it considered you a mere human." He held up his hand again to forestall her offended protest at 'mere human'. "Perhaps it's testing you."

Scowling, she demanded, "Is the castle sentient, too?"

"Unlikely, though it may have gotten ideas from the Labyrinth." He shrugged once more. "You probably won't have any trouble once you show it a firm hand."

"You're telling me I have to show the castle who's the boss?" Her tone was incredulous. He glanced quickly at her, and found that she was looking at him with the barest beginnings of a smile.

"After a fashion." He smirked in response.

Sarah rewarded him with a wider smile. Then she clambered to her feet and looked down at him, waiting. He followed her example, and when he regained his feet, they were eye-to-eye. Then she declared, "I've figured out what I'll … what was it? 'Do with the deposed king'." Her expression shifted into determination and – did Jareth imagine it? – anticipation.

He felt his expression closed up into the emotionless mask that he could see Sarah was beginning to hate. She smiled, but it wasn't a very reassuring one.

"You," she said, pointing at him, "are going to teach me how to use my magic."

He grinned. She was going to regret that, too, but he wasn't going to warn her this time. Then he bowed. "As Your Majesty commands."


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth_ belongs to LucasFilms, Henson Studios, et al.

* * *

"If you say, _'Breeeeeeeeathe'_ like that one more time," Sarah growled, mimicking Jareth's tone, "I am going to strangle you."

Jareth slowly dragged one palm down his face, stretching his features in quite the comical way, and replied, "If I don't say it like that, I'll shout it." He dropped his hand to the desk before them with a soft thump. With a sharp sideways smile, he added, "And, knowing you, that will yield exactly the opposite effect, and I'd rather not waste my time."

Sarah sniffed. "_Pfft._ I'd breathe just fine."

"Only to shout back."

"Well, yes."

A beat. And then laughter, the first of that long day. It was a relief, and the two relaxed back into their chairs and indulged the moment. Sarah broke eye contact first. It was bizarre enough to be back Underground; to be sharing a comfortable, amused glance with Jareth-Whatever-His-Surname-Was in what used to be his study but was now hers was a bit much.

It was now the early evening of the same day she'd arrived. The orange sun was sliding the last few fingerlengths to the horizon; she only knew this because the ruddy light coming through the arrow-slit windows was getting ruddier, and the air was cooling. To combat this and to find an appropriate lesson, Jareth had taught her how to light the fire in one of the two large fireplaces on one long side of the rectangular room. Then he'd had her do it again and again. Once she'd lit the fire eight times, he finally stopped dousing it, and they'd moved on.

Both took the time to ignore the sheaf of papers and the two crystal balls that sat on the surface of the surprisingly plain, dark, wooden desk. One crystal ball was a lovely transparent sphere that would fit perfectly into one's palm; fingers used to clutching a baseball would find the size familiar. The other would be better classified as… well, as something else. It was roughly round, but it gave at the bottom, where it bore its own weight; the color was slightly yellow, and its texture was like a dog's rubber foam toy that had dry-rotted.

Instead, Sarah was gazing at the huge bank of scrolls and books that filled one of the shorter walls of the study. She and Jareth had taken two well-stuffed tapestry chairs facing of the desk that sat between the two arrow slits on the second long wall. Sarah was in the chair closest to the miniature library wall, and she noted that it needed expansion. The scrolls that took up the bottom two shelves were spilling out onto the floor and were clearly acquiring creases from being pressed so tightly against each other.

The side of the room that Jareth was closest to was quite the treasury of beautiful objects. Colors and crystals and statuettes and blades winked in the setting sunlight and the firelight, and Sarah took a moment to wonder if they were just aesthetic or intended for magical purposes. One of the blades was reflecting more light than normal metal should, and one of the statuettes – one of a dwarfish shepherd and the sheep that was taller than he was – seemed to be stretching its arms into the air.

"You're not going to learn everything in one day," Jareth finally offered, forestalling Sarah's question. She glanced sharply at him, unsure whether he'd seen her intent or had just wanted to break the silence. "Actually, you'll never learn everything. I only personally know one who has, and he's dead."

"You knew him?" She lightly emphasized the past tense.

With the firelight catching on white, sharp-edged teeth, Jareth corrected her, "Know."

"… dead?" It was in the same half-singsong tone of voice.

"Royalty has its advantages." He grinned at her, and she narrowed her eyes in response. He sighed and offered a one-shouldered shrug as if to say, 'You're no fun.' The movement ruffled one side of his hair, and Sarah was reminded again of her first visit to this world. "Ghosts have all the time in the world," he answered.

Ghosts. Sarah wasn't sure if she liked the idea. She'd gotten used to talking bipedal foxes, friendly monsters, creatures that not only survived but enjoyed dismemberment, and magic. Dwarves she had in her own world, though they looked a bit different from Hoggle. She'd even almost come to terms with the fact that she'd be their ruler for the few days it would take to get Jareth to win the kingdom back.

_But ghosts?_ The sound of reality straining against itself was almost audible to Sarah. "… Of course," she murmured.

Another pause occurred, and it felt even more awkward.

Her long fingers fidgeted with her jeans where they creased behind each knee. Were they just going to sit there in the study, unsure of whether the lesson was done, always unsure of each other? Not only was the strain on reality apparent to Sarah, but the discomfort in the room was nearly tangible.

_Wait a second! Who am I? _she scoffed at herself._ I'm Sarah Williams, and I faced hardships unnumbered, etcetera, etcetera, and I'm not going to be cowed by a man!_ Even as her resolve steeled, she tried to ignore the little voice inside that cried, _'But what a man!'_

"You're taking this better than I thought," Sarah heard herself say. Now that it was out, she relaxed marginally; her fingers stilled.

Jareth's mouth quirked, and he replied, "I could say the same of you." He shrugged again and said more seriously, "However, I cannot say I'm surprised. You always were adaptive."

"Ooh, flattery," was her response, and the tone was a little livelier. Sarah crossed her arms and smirked right back. "As appreciated as it is, let's be honest. What I _was_ was good at making friends."

Abruptly, Jareth reached out and plucked the perfect crystal ball off the desk and began to idly contact juggle with it. Winking with firelight each time it passed to his right hand, the crystal danced alternately over the backs of Jareth's ungloved hands. "That's a resource in itself, Sarah. Do not discount it."

Suppressing a shiver, she wondered if her insides would ever stop clenching every time he said her name like that. She wondered, too, if he intentionally lingered over the first syllable; that was most of the charm.

With a mostly-successful attempt to control her voice, Sarah answered, "Don't give me too much credit. I was fifteen and making friends because it was right and natural." Finally, her tone plateaued at annoyance, and her brows drew together. "I wasn't _calculating_ on making alliances to get me here." One hand flew up to indicate the castle.

"Oh? And what was the business of stealing Hoggle's treasure?" he asked, falsely innocent.

Caught! She flushed but kept her chin high, and before the silence lingered too long, she said, "That was pre-friendship."

"Oh?"

_Wow, I'm getting tired of that word_, Sarah thought and braced herself for more ridicule.

Jareth did not disappoint. "'Pre-friendship'. A human fashion, perhaps? The trial run before one can call himself a friend?"

"You know what I meant, Jareth!"

A mocking smile and an uplifted brow briefly transformed him into the Goblin King she remembered. "Shall I have to enjoy this particular phase of human relationships, or is this what we're doing now?"

Red in the face, Sarah lurched to her feet and glared down at Jareth. Instead of looking abashed at picking a fight with the new sovereign or nervous about irritating a beginning magic user, Jareth gazed back up at her with an almost anticipatory gaze.

A dozen different things were clamoring at the backs of her teeth, each more cutting and vicious and childish than the ones before it. And Jareth could see them, Sarah could tell. His smirk curved a little higher; his eyes narrowed minutely.

_He _wants_ a fight!_ she realized, and she turned away before her understanding could be reflected in her eyes. A perverse urge took hold of her, and she walked toward the fire with her hands behind her back, the left hand curled around the right wrist. Her sneakers would've been quiet on the stone floor, but she was silent as she moved across the enormous carpet that covered most of the floor. She remembered the subtly colored, complex market scene that it depicted and felt almost bad for treading on it again.

_If he wants a fight, he's going to have to work harder for it. I'm no child anymore,_ she boasted to herself. _He has a woman to deal with, and I can play games, too._ Silently, she stood before the fire she'd lit. It was in the left-hand fireplace; its mate stood unlit, with a rather beautifully arranged pile of kindling on the hearth. Between them stood the study door, a towering twelve-foot tall, pale hardwood affair. Shallow bas-relief carvings decorated it, but Sarah was too irritated to examine them.

After a moment more, she finally broke the silence with a quiet question. "If you want to leave so badly, why don't you just ask? I'm not so ungenerous as to want you to leave in disgrace – dismissed, exiled." The silence echoed in the wake of the statement. Sarah smirked a little to herself, pleased with her choice of words. "I can find another magic tutor, I'm sure, and I can't get started on alliances with other nations too early, can I?"

A pause.

"There are other nations, right? This isn't all Goblin Kingdom, is it?" She turned and offered a genuinely sheepish smile, only to find that Jareth wasn't in the seat he'd occupied just a moment ago. In his place was the perfect crystal.

From the other fireplace, his voice replied, "Oh, no. You are but one kingdom of dozens – one feudal nation among hundreds." Sarah looked over and saw him standing nearly as she was before the unlit fireplace. His hands were behind his back, and he was fully facing her, his right shoulder nearly brushing the marble mantel. Even with the light from her own fireplace, Sarah couldn't quite make out his expression. His voice, however, was warm and simply informative.

Suddenly uncomfortable that he could see her face, and she could not see his, Sarah turned back to face her fire. She turned her head another few degrees away from him and continued, "Then that's fine. I can find another tutor, make an alliance, and you can go on and pursue your own interests."

"Oh?" That word again! Her fingers curled unconsciously into fists. "Whom would you ask first?" Now he sounded slightly amused. "I would not recommend the Duchy of Teschan. The dwarves are wizards at mining and metalworking, but possess virtually no magic. Though hiring masons would not go amiss; the castle does need some work, and Teschan's mines have been underused of late." Now he sounded thoughtful. "The question then, would be whether there is enough in Your Majesty's coffers to cover the expense, and if the citizens would be able to support increased taxes if there is not. But there's always war, which could get you the mines outright."

She turned and glared.

"Though taxation is quicker and less likely to make you look at me like that," he finished with a smirk in his voice.

Finally, she huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. "It would have been too easy to just say, 'I do have some use here, and I enjoy provoking you,' wouldn't it?"

"Look at the girl! Beautiful _and_ clever!" His tone was low, and the words almost purred as they passed his lips. A couple of measured steps took him from the shadows and into the flickering light that stretched in a wavering fan shape across the floor. A small, genuine smile shifted back into a smirk that sent tingles dancing over Sarah's skin, and he continued, "The other nations should be rushing to ally with _you_, love. Not the other way 'round."

Sidestepping all the hormones, his voice, the emotions, hormones, compliments and hormones, Sarah sniffed, "I'd like to postpone politics for a bit, if it's all the same."

"The sooner you resign yourself to that part of your reign, the better it will be for the kingdom," he answered in perfect seriousness. "Shirking your duties isn't an option anymore. You're no longer a student."

She jutted out her left hand, and a yellowing, opaque crystal formed there. "Sure I am," was her falsely nonchalant response. When Jareth glowered, she tossed the crystal at him. He caught it one-handed, and the surface gave only a bit. "Yeah, yeah," Sarah sighed. "I know. I can't promise that I won't skip classes, but the country won't fall apart if I can stop it." She tried and failed to suppress a yawn. "And I'll begin tomorrow."

One of his eyebrows went up, and Sarah reflected that the effect was actually stronger without the eye makeup he had once worn. It wasn't a role, or a mask; he was genuinely disapproving. Her nerves briefly quailed, but only for a moment. Then she mimicked his expression and raised a finger, waggling it very slightly. "What will ten hours matter, Jareth?"

After a moment of sour silence, he said, "Just as long as ten hours don't become ten days or ten weeks."

In response, she rolled her eyes at him. "What, are you afraid I'm going to blow up the country while I'm on the throne?"

Without even a pause, he replied, "Only a little."

Sarah laughed, finally relaxing. "Ten hours. I swear," she reassured him, and he nodded, smiling. They banished the crystals, and Jareth led her toward supper. She knew this accord would dissolve within the hour, but until it did, Sarah refused to question the feeling.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Henson Studios, et al. own _The Labyrinth._

EDIT: Hokay. I was continuing with the scent of the blanket to point up its link to the life she's left and to show that, no, I hadn't forgotten something of which I'd made a bit of a deal earlier. But since it was clearly distracting more than one person, I played it down a bit. That's the only concession this chapter.

* * *

Dinner had been simple open-faced sandwiches and a warm soup that had been little more than a flavorful broth with mushrooms floating in it. It had taken fifteen minutes for Jareth to convince Sarah that the food was safe. That conversation had been fun, in its own insane way. That Jareth frightened her was getting harder to recall, and Sarah had to forcibly remind herself of the fact. Hadn't she just promised to give him a proper chance only six hours ago? That implied mistrust. That kind of mistrust didn't go away in a day! And certainly not if her pride had anything to say about it!

The peace they'd found in the study had indeed only lasted about halfway through the meal. And to be fair, Sarah had started it; she'd reminded Jareth that she didn't intend to stay all that long. While he didn't start shouting, he hadn't reacted all that well.

"No, Sarah," he said in the patient tone one reserves for contrary children. "You made it through the Labyrinth, won back the child, and have become the new ruler." He was careful while setting down a short, undecorated silver tumbler of water. Had Sarah been a little less aggravated, she'd have noticed that he moved with the exaggerated air of someone who wanted to slam his drink onto the table but was too dignified to do so. "That's how it is."

"Why?" Her voice was tightly controlled. It didn't seem like such a bad idea, the one she'd had back Aboveground. She'd set Jareth down at the gate, he'd go through the Labyrinth; since the expectations of the runner shaped the world while he was there, Jareth would carefully avoid expecting Sarah to challenge him. Hell, it wouldn't be too hard to expect her not to hinder him while he was in the Labyrinth; it served her purpose to leave him alone. He'd go through without any trouble, solve it, and regain his throne. It seemed appallingly simple to Sarah. She said as much through clenched teeth.

"That's not how it works." That was another phrase Sarah was beginning to hate. Jareth leaned back in his high-backed wooden chair and deliberately folded his hands across his stomach. "The challenger has to have wished something important and valuable away."

"A child?"

"Usually. It's traditional. And they are very valuable here in the Underground."

Sarah unconsciously leaned forward a bit. "Valuable?"

"Oh, yes." Jareth smiled, back in indulgent-teacher mode. "Being long-lived as we are, Nature made it difficult for us to conceive and for our women to carry to term. If we bred like humans, there would be serious population problems." The teacher look went away, replaced by the less wide-eyed, more knowing smug expression he more normally wore. "We did an especially brisk trade in changelings in the Middle Ages."

"Changelings?" Sarah breathed. Then, she jerked back and leveled a finger at Jareth, eyes narrowed to slits. "Don't change the subject," she snapped. If Jareth was disappointed that she'd resisted her own curiosity, he didn't show it. "Do you _have_ a child? Does it have to be a child? You said 'something important and valuable'."

The former king rolled those fascinating mismatched eyes, and Sarah found it momentarily easier to forget that he was attractive and thus focus on her goal. "In order: no, no, and yes, I did say that."

"Well, do you have something to wish away?" Sarah didn't examine too closely the relief she felt at his answers. If she did, she'd pinpoint which answer relieved her, and she did not want to think of that now, if at all. Instead, she focused on a spot on the wall just to the right of Jareth's head.

"My estate, but it would be… disrespectful to wish that away." Jareth drew her gaze again by flashing a brilliant, sharp grin and drawling, "My parents, in particular, wouldn't enjoy coming out of their front door to find that they'd landed in the middle of the Goblin Castle. And the castle wouldn't take it kindly to be forced to rearrange itself to encompass a country estate."

Sarah glowered at Jareth, muttering, "I thought you said the castle wasn't sentient."

"I also said that the Labyrinth might have given it ideas."

"Everything here is so _literal_." This she muttered into her own water tumbler before taking a sip. Almost sullenly, she thumped the tumbler back onto the table. "Well, is there anything else you can wish to me? Really, I promise that I won't get in the way, and you'll get it back."

At that, Jareth looked uncomfortable. "That's not –"

"- how it works," she finished for him, deadpan. Their supper sat half-finished and forgotten between them. With a wrinkled nose, Sarah asked, "How does it work this time, then?"

The way he smiled in response annoyed her. His expression was indulgent and amused, as though she were a precocious child. _Hardly appropriate, then, _Sarah thought sourly, _if he's supposedly enamored of me._

"The spell requires that you have to want to wish it away. The motivation is the yearning to get rid of what you're wishing away."

"And with you still being here, wishing it to me wouldn't really be getting rid of it, anyway, would it?"

He blinked. "Yes. That, too." Another smile flashed, but this time it stayed, and it was decidedly more brilliant than the last. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and lacing his fingers together. If he leaned in any further or tilted his head a degree lower, he'd be gazing at her through his lashes. "Clever girl. I had not thought of that."

_Resist the allure, Sarah,_ she ordered herself, averting her eyes. Suddenly, the sparse, spiky green design on the black soup bowl was fascinating, and the way it looped in on itself served as a way to focus her fresh outrage. _After six years, he invades your home and interrupts dinner, and here he is, six hours later, trying to charm you into bed!_ Well. Maybe it wasn't quite as drastic as all that. He was charming her, certainly, but if his aim were bed, Sarah was fairly sure that he'd be trying a little harder. Maybe… maybe that was just an actual compliment, she thought, finally lifting her gaze to his.

It was clear from the smug, amused, knowing look on Jareth's face that he'd been able to read Sarah's entire argument with herself on her face. Her brows snapped together in a glower, and Jareth's smug look widened into a smug half-smile that showed a few teeth.

Sarah's fingers curled into loose fists; they itched to smack that look off of his face. She willed him not to say anything, because asking him not to would just prompt him to demand an explanation. She could just imagine it:

_'Don't say a word.'_

_'I beg your pardon? I wasn't intending to speak. Is something wrong?'_

_'Nothing!'_

_'Oh?' _Even in her imagination, he was insufferable!_ 'Clearly not. What could've prompted such an outburst? What did you expect me to say?'_

_'…'_

_'Sarah?'_

_"Sarah."_

"Sarah."

She started. He was actually speaking! "What?" she answered, not quite snapping.

Gone was the smugness, replaced entirely by amusement. Simultaneously, Sarah was relieved and annoyed. The relief was because while Jareth was as attractive as before, simple amusement rendered him friendly. The annoyance was because he was laughing at her.

"We're getting nothing else done tonight, that much is clear," Jareth drawled. "I suggest we retire. A bath and bed will do us both good."

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm going to need my own room. It didn't look like you'd had time to move out." Sarah instinctively crossed her arms, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "We can't both have the royal suite."

"Ah, you suspicious thing!" he cried, half-laughing. The former king leaned back. Resting one ankle on the opposite knee, he lifted both hands, palm-out, to shoulder height. "You wouldn't trust a rock, would you?"

With one twirled finger, which indicated everything, Sarah retorted, "The Underground."

The easy grin Jareth offered in response was still simply an entertained one. "You've learned some lessons well," he admitted. With a scrape, he pushed back his chair and rose fluidly to his feet. "But not quite well enough," he continued, waggling a finger. "I'll show you."

Sarah frowned at the hand he extended to her. Then she relented, and he helped her to her feet. With his free hand, Jareth made a quick, flashing gesture, and the world around them spun halfway around. When it stilled, they stood in the white-and-gold bedroom that Jareth had brought Sarah to that afternoon. She couldn't resist gaping.

Gone were the tapestries that had adorned the walls; these were replaced by blank white panels. The headboard of the bed was still set against one wall, but the wall it was on had changed; the footboard and its accompanying plain trunk faced the door to the anteroom. Where elaborately embroidered drapes had hung around the bed now hung three layers of thin, fine material. The detailed carpet, to which Sarah hadn't paid much attention to begin with, was gone as well. The gray stone tile floor was cool even through her sneakers. Only a single, wide, thickly-piled off-white rug stretched between the bed and one of the doors set into the wall to her left. On the far side of the bed stood a chest of drawers made from a honey-colored wood and topped with a slab of marble. On top stood a plain white pitcher and bowl.

The only thing that stood out was her neatly folded blue-and-green blanket from home. Halfheartedly, she hoped that the thing hadn't been laundered in her absence.

"You'd forgotten magic," Jareth said over her shoulder in a chiding tone, making her jump slightly.

Recovering and taking two steps away, she retorted dryly, "And I'd forgotten I'd given you permission to use it freely."

He grinned. "And don't think I'm going to offer to relinquish it. What's said is said." There he was, finally – the predator, the part of him that wouldn't bow to anyone, no matter what or who. Sarah'd wondered where that part of him had retreated to, and she was surprised to find herself relieved that it was not permanently gone.

"Oh? And if I command it?" she ventured. Surprising herself again, Sarah found that she was only half-serious. She couldn't keep the half-smile off her face.

An echoing smirk spread across Jareth's face. Even as the smile lines deepened and added a few crows' feet at the corner of his left eye, Sarah reflected that he still didn't seem old. An absent part of her mind wondered what his age was.

"You wouldn't cripple your teacher, now would you, Sarah?" he asked in a teasing lilt. One long fingered hand came up to rest on his hip, just above the hem of his black jerkin. The other began to wave back and forth, toying with a crystal ball that suddenly was there. "Crystal magic is a specialty known only to monarchs, and who among your new peers would teach their rival something so exceptional?" This last came out more seriously, and with a final wave, the crystal sphere was gone.

Trying to keep the tone light, for she had no more energy for arguments or politics, Sarah sighed gustily and conceded, "Okay, fine." She waved a finger. "But there'd better not be any surprises in here. No listening spells, no watching spells, nothing."

To her relief, Jareth seemed as reluctant as she to return to solemnity. He loudly sighed, too, and said, "Now, why would you think that of me?" His tone was comically petulant. "Don't you trust me?" Dark lashes fluttered over the mismatched eyes, and Sarah had to snort.

A pause followed where they looked quietly at each other. After only a few moments, Sarah's nerves quailed.

"Promise me," she said, unwillingly serious, unhappy that the command made him shut himself back behind the bland mask he'd adopted. Before he could reply, she hurried to say, "I trust you to be a man of your word." Jareth blinked, startled out from behind the mask, if only for a moment; he seemed as stunned as she to discover that she meant it. "I just need your word."

Sarah almost missed the look of sadness that crossed his face before he smiled gently at her. "You have it. This room is bare of anything to do with me. It is magically dead. It will remain so until you learn enough to make it otherwise." He took a step backward from her and bowed from the waist. "I promise."

Just a moment before he teleported away, she whispered, "Thank you." Then she was left standing in the middle of a room bare of magic and nearly bare of anything that spoke of who might have ever lived there. It left Sarah feeling chilled and restless.

In a flash, her annoyance returned when she realized that she had nothing to wear to bed, that she had nothing fresh to wear tomorrow, and she didn't want to relocate Jareth just to remedy that situation. And even though she took him at his word that there was no watching spell, Sarah wished heartily not to sleep in the nude. Not here. Not so soon. A few hurried steps brought her to the knee-high, flat-topped wooden trunk at the foot of the roughly queen-sized bed. It was fitted with unobtrusive brass studs and bands, and it seemed to be made of beech wood. She slowly lifted the deceptively heavy lid to find the trunk full of blankets and one fluffy duvet. All were shades of white, gold, and dove-gray.

"Useful," she murmured. It was midnight or so – or it would've been had she been back Aboveground – and she could feel the chill of night settling into her bones. Castles were made of stone and not much else, and there was virtually nothing to insulate against the temperatures. Sarah pulled out the dove-gray duvet, gathered it clumsily in her arms, and tossed it onto the bed, just past the blue-and-green blanket. Then she moved to the chest of drawers.

The topmost drawer, she found, was split into two narrower drawers set side-by-side. The left-hand drawer held washcloths; the right held hand towels. The second drawer down held four white cotton shifts. Sarah recognized their make from her costume classes in university. These were undergarments worn by both genders for about as long as humans figured out that they should layer clothing for warmth and hygiene. They were still in use by men until long underwear became far more popular; women used them yet longer. Most importantly, they were slept in, and they were about the size and shape of a good, old-fashioned nightshirt. If Sarah put one on, it would likely go to at least her knees.

She took one out and didn't even open the bottom drawer. She'd found what she needed. She followed the white carpet to the door across the room; inside were something resembling a nineteenth-century pull-chain toilet and a huge tub with hot- and cold-water taps. A quick look around revealed a cupboard full of fluffy gray towels, and at the end of the hour she spent there, Sarah came out and collapsed onto the bed. She barely took the time to spread her (comfortably unlaundered) blanket on top of the white bedclothes and gray duvet before she fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth_ belongs to LucasFilms, Henson Studios and probably a few others.

* * *

"Well, it took longer than I thought it would."

Sarah looked up from her desk, where she had been obsessing over her brittle, porous, completely _wrong_ crystal sphere; Jareth was at the newly installed second desk in the study, and he was frowning thoughtfully at a scroll bearing a green ribbon. Grateful for the opportunity to leave the contrary crystal to itself for a moment, Sarah put it down and walked over to Jareth's desk.

The desk itself was a honey-colored wood with a darker decorative inlay on the front panel that Jareth had conjured to look well used but very fine. They'd decided to put it in front of the small bookshelf below one arrow slit, and they'd moved the original desk to the space in front of the curio shelf, below the second arrow slit. Jareth had only put up a token argument about their sharing the space. Secretly, Sarah thought he was either gratified by her persistence about it or amused by it; it probably wasn't "done" by royalty.

This was another decision she was certain she'd eventually regret. This suspicion only grew when she caught him a few times watching her with a slightly predatory expression; however, pride wouldn't let her change her mind after being so insistent on the arrangement in the first place. She ignored him for the most part; being the older sister of one Toby Williams had equipped her for that.

"What took longer?" she asked, standing before Jareth's desk and craning her neck to examine the parchment he held. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, because the shirt that Jareth had commandeered from some poor humanoid servant was a few sizes too big, and it gaped at its laced-up neck. Upside: it was a lovely pale blue color and went well with the jeans Sarah had decided to wear again that day.

Handing the page over to her, he replied, "The first of a veritable mountain of paperwork." His drawl was colored with what Sarah suspected was malicious anticipation. "It is a formal greeting and welcome from the Queen of Perrith addressed to her Esteemed Peer, Her Royal Majesty Sarah, Queen of the Goblin Kingdom."

Sarah didn't respond, being too busy staring in bafflement at the parchment she held. After a few seconds of holding it before her at a reasonable distance, she held it at arm's length. The look of bafflement was slowly, steadily, progressing toward consternation. "Jareth," Sarah said plaintively, bringing the scroll so close to her face that she crossed her eyes.

"Yes?"

With a loud flap, she thrust the scroll back at him and demanded, "What the hell does this say?" Jareth jerked his head back, narrowly avoiding a noseful of parchment; he plucked the scroll from her hands and laid it on the desk. "I can't read a word of it! It's not English."

"Not what?"

Sarah's expression finally graduated to distress. Setting trembling fingers on the edge of Jareth's desk, she repeated, "En- English. The language I'm speaking to you in."

One fine eyebrow arched upward. "You're speaking Commons, just as I am."

Sarah could feel the blood rush from her face. "No, no, no. We're speaking in a tongue that originated in England," she answered, feeling slightly lightheaded. "You have an English accent!"

"It is a Fae accent, Sarah," he corrected her, his own expression going from curious to mildly harried. "Fae is the language I was raised to speak, and it is that which colors my Commons." Deep creases formed over the long, thin nose, and he asked, "What is England?"

Digging her fingers into her hair, Sarah continued, "A rock in the east of the North Atlantic – sits next to Ireland and Europe. Home of rugby, rashers, and a subway called the Underground!" She tugged at her hair and missed the look of complete incomprehension that had come over Jareth's face. "The English have stolen words and grammatical rules from a dozen other languages over the last few thousand years. _English._" The pitch over her voice was rising without her consent, and she decided that it would be a good idea to find a seat. Luckily, there were three straight-backed chairs against the wall where her desk had been yesterday, and she slid into one in a hurry.

Considering all recent events, Sarah thought that she'd been quite the good sport. Over the last twelve hours, she had come to terms with the fact that her life, for the next couple of weeks at least, had changed drastically. She would be living Underground, she had magic, and Jareth was going to teach her how not to kill herself with it. Easy enough, once she got her mind around the idea. But this place was fucking with her _language_, and she didn't think she could deal with that.

It really didn't help that Jareth was now watching her with an openly amused expression.

"Are you telling me, Sarah," he drawled past his upraised, steepled fingers, "That the Queen of the Goblin Kingdom is _illiterate?_" Clearly, he'd set aside curiosity about England and had instead quickly come to the conclusion that Sarah herself was trying to avoid.

From the palms into which she'd buried her face, Sarah's voice snapped, "Shut up, Jareth."

The laughter was clear in his voice now. "Am I going to have to teach you to read, as well, Sarah? Shall my official title now be Royal Tutor?" When Sarah raised her head and glared at him, she saw that he was leaning back in his gray wingback chair, fingers laced comfortably across his stomach. One booted foot was propped on the opposite knee, and Jareth lazily tapped the toe of that boot on the edge of the desk. Wearing a dark green jerkin and trousers today, he cut quite the figure, and he probably knew it. Smugness was just emanating from him.

"If you don't stop talking right now," she growled, "Your official title is going to be Get The Hell Out of My Study." She buried her face in her hands again, generously ignoring Jareth's laughter. "Why me?" she grumbled, but it sounded more like, "Ffhuf mufh?" due to the effect of her palms pressing against her lips.

She heard the shifting of cloth and the creak of leather. "Rather than contemplate any number of the several misfortunes you've brought upon yourself," Jareth drawled, "Or obsess about the divergence of my culture and yours, why don't you focus on the politics, as you promised?" Sarah lifted her eyes in a glare, only to see that Jareth was slowly waving the scroll at her. "Queen Gyfudd trusts that you have had a… 'felicitous inauguration to your rule, may it last for eternity' – until it serves her to try to unseat you – and 'invites you to a fete in your honor a month hence.'"

"Oh, no, no." She felt like she should laugh. "I'm not going to be here in a month."

"Sarah." That was Jareth's weary tone, the precursor to an argument. He even pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes.

"Jareth, _no_ -"

He overrode her, raising his voice only a little. "Sarah, until you find a way to get off the throne, you'll have to play politics like the rest of us." He evidently saw the mutinous look that usually came before a loud, lengthy Sarah Williams Rant and lifted a forestalling hand. "And if you do manage to escape this place, which you so clearly despise, have a care for who takes your place. Whoever it is will have to deal with Queen Gyfudd, whom you're intent on mortally offending."

That worked. And Sarah was _not_ happy about it. Her teeth ground against each other, and she wondered if Jareth could hear it, because in her head it was nearly deafening. Slowly, she sat up and prized her teeth apart, and she asked even more slowly, "Wouldn't it be worse if I said yes and then didn't show up?"

"On the contrary, actually. Crises come up for monarchs regularly, and someone with as huge a nation as Queen Gyfudd will understand if you must withdraw a week or two prior to the fete and send a high-ranking subordinate." All this came out in one breath, as if Jareth were mocking her slowness. He grew solemn again, though, saying, "I wouldn't recommend it. The fete is specifically to honor you, and I guarantee that Her Majesty has already sent invitations to everyone else."

Sarah rubbed at her eyes wearily. "Can't she just change the name on the invitations and distribute them magically when you figure out something to wish away and then retrieve from the Labyrinth?"

"You can't wager on that, Sarah," was the former king's answer. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he leaned back in the chair, resuming his smug pose from earlier. "Nothing I have is of any value to you as the Queen, and I have nothing of which I truly want to be free. Unless another challenger shows up and bests you – which could honestly be disastrous – you're going to have to attend the fete."

"Disastrous?"

"The average wisher-away is twelve."

"Ooh."

"…and a goblin."

"No!"

"Yes. They're impulsive, never do anything by halves, and are incredibly selfish. They also have the attention span of a bumblebee." A very small smile was forming on Jareth's face, and the frankness in it again made him look friendly.

Sarah felt her glower finally lifting, and she fought a smile. "Be serious! The goblins can't be a real threat in this situation!"

He obeyed. "If you're so desperate to return to that predictable, mundane, sheepish existence that you call home, then I want to make sure that you don't just hand my kingdom over to the first halfwit who offers!" The friendly face had gone, and in its place was his rare look of rage. It was only present for a moment before Jareth regained control and hid behind the more usual dry, arrogant mask. Sarah wasn't sure if she successfully hid the fear that instinctively sprang up in response, but she immediately schooled her expression into bland politeness.

And she hadn't missed 'my kingdom'. It gave her hope.

Hiding behind her own poker face, Sarah said thoughtfully, "Thank you for warning me. A goblin won't be the Goblin King. Even I can see that that would be awful." With a grunt, she heaved herself to her feet and strode across the room to stand in front of one fireplace. She flicked her hand, and a small fire reluctantly wavered into life. Sarah crouched with a sigh of irritation, held both hands out toward a flame that was hardly bigger than three candles together, and pushed. Very slowly, the little fire stepped across the bits of kindling and stretched up to the larger logs. By the time it had reached the size that a Cub Scout would reluctantly accept, Sarah grumpily thought that it'd have taken her less time to do so without magic.

_Thankfully, _she thought,_ Jareth's letting me collect myself. Damn him for being so nice. I've been here two days, and already he knows how to deal with me better than my own mother!_ And it was true. While Karen had taken the time to learn her stepdaughter's triggers, Linda, when she could be found, had always managed to needle Sarah to the point of tears. That a virtual stranger – _who wants to get into my pants!_ she added a little unkindly – knew enough to let Sarah retreat and regroup was unsettling. Sarah was reluctantly starting to get used to the feeling.

"So what do I need to know to go to a formal fete in my honor?" she asked quietly. So quietly, in fact, that she was uncertain as to whether Jareth had even heard her.

Just as she was gathering herself to repeat the inquiry, Jareth's smooth, obviously relieved voice flowed across the room, saying, "How to read Fae body language; how to control your own. Traditional dances and formal table etiquette." A pause followed, and then he offered, "These I can also teach you, if you'll allow me."

"Hmph. It's just as well, then, that this thing is taking place a month from now," she answered, still crouching with her back toward Jareth. Inside, she was still asking, _Why me? Why is my life so complicated? Why why why? _However, she knew better than to voice the questions; the last thing she needed now was to be mocked for self-pity.

After a few more moments of sullen fire gazing, Sarah heard Jareth stand and take a few steps forward. "Shall we begin, then?" he asked quietly, and when she turned, she saw that he had one hand extended toward her. If she didn't know better, she'd have sworn that he was watching her with something like sympathy.

"All right."


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Henson Studios, et al. own _The Labyrinth_.

* * *

Sarah didn't step on his feet. Not once in the week that they'd been practicing. No matter how closely he held her for the intimate dances, no matter how complex the set dances' steps were, no matter how fast the tempo, Sarah never stomped, crushed, nor even so much as brushed over Jareth's toes.

It was sort of pissing Jareth off, even as he was privately surprised. He'd honestly had hopes of hissing and moaning quietly in her ear on the third or fourth good stomp; the damage to his toes would heal and would be completely worth the pain. Because as pleasant as it was to teach an eager, bright, beautiful student, and as equally nice as it was to have a healthy argument with her, there were at least a dozen other things Jareth could imagine that he'd rather be doing with her.

And there she was, sitting at his – now _her_ – desk, twiddling with the long thick plait of hair that she'd pulled over her left shoulder. Her right hand lifted the end and drew the end of the braid, paintbrush-like, against her right cheek and ear.

And Jareth sighed and added one more item to his mental 'Things I'd Rather Do' list. That list began with 'Sarah' and was followed with amendments to the first item like 'Sarah in the garden' and 'Sarah against the wall'; his current favorite was 'Sarah on the desk'. Then he dropped his gaze, lest she see the hunger in his eyes.

Still, even if she didn't provide him with more of an opportunity to… well, _distract_ her from her lessons, he supposed – Jareth was thoroughly enjoying those lessons. The more intimate dances satisfied his need to touch her – palm to palm, bellies pressed together, the steps making their thighs brush against one another – and dancing with someone who was quickly becoming accomplished was a delight.

_She was an aspiring actor, _he reminded himself, _So I suppose she had lessons._ And regardless of training, Sarah truly had a talent for dance. However, he didn't yet want to tell her so. He was beginning to run out of traditional dances to teach her and had begun to make up some of his own. And every one of them had Sarah's tall, curvaceous, lightly toned frame pressed against his own as much as possible.

A discontented moan brought Jareth's eyes back up, and what he saw was a Goblin Queen slumped over her book with her face distorted between the hands that were pressed tightly at her temples.

_Unfortunately, the history and etiquette lessons are not going quite as well, _Jareth thought with a smirk. The book he'd given her was one that lay on the shelf in the nurseries of most of the nobles of the Underground, a picture book that outlined the basic gestures and genuflections necessary in court life.

"Why," Sarah asked petulantly through taut lips, "must protocol exist?" She dropped her hands to the book before her and laid her head down on top of them. Her next question was muffled in the billowing sleeves that gathered, laced, at her wrists. "Whatever happened to, 'How are you today? Good? Good. Nice weather. Okay, you have a good day.'?"

"It exists because you'd horribly offend some royal with too much familiarity," he answered in the tones of a patient teacher. Inwardly, however, he was amused that she was echoing the same complaint he'd had as a child.

Grumpily, she retorted, "They'd only be offended because they think they're special and somehow deserve to have their dinners and balls and business delayed so they can hear _extra words._" When he chuckled, she lifted her head again and continued, "And that's not familiar talk. Above, that's the kind of conversation you have with complete strangers."

"_Above_," Jareth agreed, smirking a little derisively. "But not Underground. You keep forgetting that the nation you came from is historically an unusual thing. Democratic republics have a habit of dying and being replaced by the monarchies and oligarchies that they replaced. And you also forget that you've landed yourself within the ranks of royalty." He noted that she'd called it "Above" and not "home"; he chose not point it out to her.

Sarah's lip curled just a bit. "The problem is royalty think themselves divinely installed." Leaning back in her overstuffed brown armchair, Sarah crossed her arms over what was becoming her favorite dark blue shirt and declared, "Such utter b.s."

"Such utter what?"

Two spots of color rose to her cheeks, and Jareth suddenly decided that he'd have to embarrass her more. When he inspired her to rage, she generally went pale, but the flushed look became her more.

"Bullshit," she explained, sheepishly lowering her eyes. When she looked back up through her lashes, Jareth hadn't quite banished the smug smirk from his face, and Sarah's eyes narrowed when she saw it. "And you _knew_ that, you ass!" she snapped without much heat. "You're such a jerk!"

Jareth's smirk widened. _Oh, am I then?_ "Namecalling, Sarah? And just a week ago, you insisted that you were an adult and gained the throne." The young woman stiffened, and he couldn't help but finish, "Do make up your mind."

She glared briefly at him, and the hurt in her eyes cut him, and Jareth briefly regretted saying anything. Then Sarah shot up from her chair and stalked toward the fireplaces like an angry cat. _Oh, hell._

"Stop retreating, Sarah," he called out sharply, and she stopped. But she refused to turn back around. Any other time, he'd take the opportunity to engage in a lazy perusal of her figure, from the braid, to the loose shirt, to the bottom-hugging gray skirt, all the way down to her slippered feet. Unfortunately, there was a lesson for him to teach.

Sarah's voice was cold. "I'm not retreating. Just – I don't have to sit there and be talked to that way. If you're going to continue it, you're going to have to do it without the pleasure of my company." Then she continued walking till she reached her favored spot before the fireplace to the left of the study door. The goblin carvings on the door all turned their heads to watch her. "If I wanted to retreat, I'd leave the room."

Equally cool, Jareth retorted, "You're falling back. That's a retreat, no matter how far you go. How are you going to survive the fete, let alone normal politics if you surrender the field at the least provocation?"

"You and I have _history_," Sarah reminded him. She was clearly trying to keep her tone light and neutral. It came out like a growl. "You know which buttons to push. And even if you make me nervous, you obviously want the kingdom to thrive; losing my temper here isn't as dangerous."

Jareth made use of the magic that Sarah had permitted him to use, and in a half a heartbeat, he was suddenly standing right behind her. He was close enough for her to feel his body heat, and he saw her go rigid, but she refused to turn and face him.

"Do you think that the nobles won't know 'which buttons to push', Sarah? That they won't find out within an hour? That they won't see your bravado for what it is?" He was almost hissing the words in her ear, and he was close enough to see the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Absurdly, this pleased him; making her react in any manner pleased him.

"All they have to do is _push_." He leaned in, leaving barely a fingerbreadth between his chest and her back.

"Stop it," she growled.

He didn't. "Remember that I'm over six thousand years old, and I was the youngest of the royalty. We learn the tricks of ferreting out weaknesses in our _nurseries_, Sarah. The people you will face have eons of experience." Finally, he closed the space between them and rested his hands on her shoulders. "They'll have you pegged in _minutes_."

A flare of blue light was all the warning Jareth got before he was shoved back a foot and a half by an invisible force. The air around Sarah crackled with energy, and the blue flames of her raw magic waved wildly six inches around her skin. She whirled on him, the blue flames making a noise like a torch being thrown through the air. Wisps of hair were lifting and dancing around her head.

"I told you to _stop_," she hissed at him.

Gods, she was beautiful.

Hiding his fear and the undeniable desire, Jareth calmly reminded her, "Control, Sarah."

The girl bared her teeth in a snarl, but a perfect crystal ball dripped from her fingers and fell to the carpet with a _plop. Plop, plop, plop, plop_. One after another, crystals formed at her fingers, swelling like rainwater at the tip of a birch leaf and dripping off to join its brothers with muffled, musical tones. Two dozen perfect, dewdrop-clear spheres clustered on the floor around Sarah before she'd gotten the blue fire to retreat. Where she'd once dragged the light back into her body, she'd released the energy into physical forms, and Jareth was proud.

Quietly, he informed her, "You can't afford this anywhere else, Sarah. They will take it as a threat."

"I know." She, too, was quiet, but she hissed through her teeth and glared down at the crystals pooled at her feet.

"They will also take it as an unquestionable mark of your weaknesses."

"I _know_."

"Sarah –"

"Jareth, I _know! _I'm trying, okay?" Sarah shouted; she reached up and covered her eyes. Her hands did not hide her tightened lips and quivering chin. "I'm _trying_," she repeated in a whisper.

_Damn._ Cursing himself, he reached forward and pulled her into his arms. She shuffled forward, accidentally toeing a few crystals out of the way. "I know, love," Jareth murmured into her hair. He tried not to be too conscious of her scent or the waves of warm breath that washed down over his collarbone; he focused instead on the knuckles that she was pressing into his neck while still covering her eyes, the tension in her shoulders.

"You _are_ doing well. It is unreasonable to think you'll be able to learn all the defenses you need in a month." Gods, he hated to feel her slump beneath his hands. Of all things for Sarah to grow out of, Jareth became afraid that her pigheaded courage was one of them. The courage was necessary; pigheadedness even had its charms. "But you're trying, you're doing well, and you will not go to that fete completely vulnerable." He did _not_ say anything about her age or her being a human; he gave himself a mental pat on the back for it.

Being sure to school his face into … how would he classify it? Friendly tenderness? Gentle reassurance? Being sure to try not to show his want too much, Jareth took her by the shoulders and pushed her back a step. He let her swipe her wrists across her eyes and sniff mightily. She looked up at him past lashes that stuck together in triangles; the look she gave him was dulled and exhausted, but the spark that was uniquely Sarah's remained. That would have to suffice.

"I won't?" she asked in a surprisingly steady voice.

"Not at all," he answered, and he felt his lips tilt in that lazy smile they preferred to be in. "_I'm_ teaching you, aren't I?"

When some of the tiredness and defeat faded from her face, pushed away by narrowed eyes and a small reluctant smile, something inside Jareth cheered. _There's the Sarah I've loved. There's the Sarah who'll tip this world on its ear!_

"Yes," was her considering reply.

His smile widened, and he asked, "Then what's there to worry about?" before turning smartly about and striding back to his desk. The whole way back, he could feel her gaze on his back, and when he reached his desk, Jareth leaned against it and crossed his arms. Stretching out one leg and crossing his ankles pulled certain muscles taut and leant him the appearance of a lazing predator, and he held the pose for a beat before turning his head to see Sarah still before her fireplace, ankle-deep in crystals.

"Well?"

"What?" Oh, her bewilderment brought back some of the innocence she'd tried to grow out of! _Delicious! Just look at those big green eyes and those fluttering lashes!_ Jareth struggled not to fall into that gaze. _What a woman she's made of herself. But she can't deny the child in her._

His lazy smile spread into a grin and gestured grandly at Sarah's feet. "Well, gather those things and bring them over. We've lessons!"


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: LucasFilms, Henson Studios, others own _The Labyrinth_.

* * *

Their conversations were getting both more interesting and more mundane, Sarah decided. The longer they went on avoiding the topic her first visit to this world, the harder they found it to think of other things to talk about. This was amusing in some ways and troublesome in others. It betrayed a comfort level of which Sarah had been unaware, and when she was able suddenly to joke with Jareth, the intimacy of it shocked her.

"You're telling me that when you said 'English', you meant 'British'?" Jareth asked as innocently as he possibly could.

Unable to decide between disbelief, laughter, and violence, Sarah's reply came out deadpan: "England's part of Great Britain, along with Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland."

Jareth, in turn, decided completely on exasperation. "Well, if you'd said so in the first place, I'd have known what you were speaking of! The Britons have a long history with the Underground – with the Fae, especially." A moment of thoughtful silence later, he mused, "Though I had never heard of it referred to as great before. It's no different from any other Aboveground land these days. About two thousand years ago, humans began to disbelieve and hunt down magic; the Underground completely broke ties with Briton centuries ago."

Sarah resisted the powerful desire to smack the back of Jareth's head by glaring at him and counting silently to ten. For his part, Jareth almost managed to hide his mocking smirk. Since he failed, Sarah swatted him anyway.

Two days later, a mild headache was forming between Sarah's eyes, and she'd already named the throb the Power Headache; Magic Headache seemed to imply something else or at least something oxymoronic. 'Power' also indicated the magnitude that the pounding could reach if she didn't leach the magic into crystals or other spells. These headaches were generally brought on by intense negative emotions; Jareth insisted that the pain arose because she quashed those emotions rather than letting them out immediately. Sarah privately thought that he was just giving an excuse for his own tendency to lose his temper.

This one was starting to increase, and she rubbed the tips of her fingers against her forehead. "Do you mean to tell me," she asked in a too-patient tone, "that I could just teleport to Hoggle, or Didymus, or Ludo? That you'd teach me the spell if I requested it? That you could've taken me yourself the first day or two, had I just asked?" It had been ten days, and she'd only just gotten the courage to ask about her friends; she'd been afraid that … well, that they wouldn't exist, that they were part of the compulsion spell.

"Did I not just say so?"

Through clenched teeth, Sarah asked, "Why didn't you bring this up earlier, Jareth? I think I would have liked to have known."

"You seemed content, as you did not ask." His face and voice hid his amusement, making him seem distant, but Sarah saw the minute creases at the outside edges of each eye that betrayed a smile. She'd pretty quickly discovered that his second-favorite game was Make Sarah Cranky, which came directly after Make Sarah Think Dirty, _Dirty_ Thoughts.

_I could strangle you, d'you know that?_ she thought viciously at him, moving her fingers to rub at her temples.

"Do you realize you said that out loud, Sarah?"

"AARGH!" was the calm, eloquent response.

"Perhaps I should perform the spell," Jareth offered blandly the second time that the world failed to spin halfway 'round and deposit them at the bridge on the edge of the Bog.

Sarah, who was panting heavily and standing with her hands on her knees, shook her head. Wisps of hair escaped her braid to dangle around her face. "I need to learn it, don't I?" Jareth answered with silence. "Any novice in your world can do this! I _need_ it!"

"'Any novice' is also three times your age by the time they perfect the technique," he replied. He clasped gloved hands behind his back and rocked almost patiently to and fro on his feet. Sarah hadn't asked about the gloves, though this was the first time she'd seen them since she was fifteen, and she was painfully curious. "I'm only yielding to this wish because it is a good defensive measure – no other reason."

"Yeah, yeah. Afraid I'm gonna just pop back Above and stay there?" she groused, flicking a glare up at him, which he returned and did with far better form. With a grunt, she stood straight again and said, "How's this? I try one more time, then _you_ get to do it."

"Fair. Just alert me when I am needed."

"Smug jerk."

"Anytime you're ready, Sarah."

With furrowed brow and narrowed eyes, Sarah fixed the image of the bridge at the edge of the Bog. She gripped the energy that pulsed angrily behind her eyes in the form of the Power Headache and squeezed, pride driving her focus. Her fingers curled at her sides; the gesture was a useless physical reflection of her mental efforts. The image in her mind wavered like a reflection in rippling water, and Sarah clenched her power around it desperately.

Then, the image flickered out, and Sarah felt a staggering sense of vertigo. Briefly, she thought that it'd worked. But when firm hands suddenly gripped her above both elbows, and she realized that her legs weren't quite holding her up, Sarah knew that she'd failed once again. And the failure would be bringing her to her knees if Jareth weren't keeping her upright.

Keeping the curses tightly behind her teeth, Sarah pulled out of Jareth's hands, and with as much dignity as fuzzy vision and burning cheeks would allow, she admitted, "I believe it's your turn."

She didn't watch him perform the spell. She wasn't up to seeing the smirk that must've been on his face – nor the view of the world spinning with them as its axis. Instead, Sarah stood with her knees locked and arms held gingerly at her sides. Her sudden submergence in overwhelming odor – a cross between soiled diapers and rotting meat – told her they'd arrived.

Opening her eyes, staring resolutely away from where she thought Jareth was, Sarah got a quick impression of her surroundings. There was the huge tree from which Didymus had fought Ludo; there was the ledge and the rockslide that had marked Sarah and Hoggle's entrance to the area around the Bog. There, of course, was the Bog.

And there were step-like rocks leading to a cliff that opened onto nothing.

"You didn't repair the bridge."

In tones of amusement, Jareth answered, "The rock-caller replaced it satisfactorily, if you'll recall. The boulders will last longer than a new wooden bridge."

With a weary glare, Sarah turned and saw Jareth smirking at her. To be fair, the smirk was not as smug or malicious as she'd expected; it made her mood just a little more sour, actually, to know that she'd assumed wrongly. Again.

"That does explain the difficulty," he went on, carefully looking away from her. Out of the corner of one eye, however, Jareth still watched her, and Sarah could see the telltale creases at the outside edge. "You should, perhaps, not envision the location quite so specifically. A very good impression of the locale is necessary, but exhaustive detail can be detrimental."

"A bridge isn't exactly 'exhaustive detail,'" Sarah muttered.

"You'd rather I gloat about your faulty memory?"

She blew a raspberry in response.

One long fingered, gloved hand reached out and tapped the end of Sarah's nose. "Take the olive branch, Your Majesty. You won't get many of them, I assure you."

"Fine. Accepted. Good job with the spell. Thank you for your help." Finally, Sarah smiled at him. The smile was a little sour, but her effort was obvious. "Have I covered all the bases?"

With the eyebrow quirk that meant that Sarah had pulled out an Aboveground idiom that Jareth didn't get, he smiled back and answered, "How about, 'I owe you a reward of your choosing for the assistance rendered this day,'?"

"Nice try."

"I thought so."

"Let's go find Sir Didymus."


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth_ and all its effects belong to LucasFilms, the Henson folks, etc, etc.

* * *

"Sir Didymus?" Sarah called loudly. Nothing. "My lord knight!" Surely a bipedal fox's hearing, despite Didymus' age, would pick up on a shout. She turned slightly to Jareth with a furrowed brow and asked, "Where is he, Jareth?"

With a mild reprimand in his glare, he answered, "I'm not the one to ask. The last time I saw him, not only was he here, but he was in perfect, exasperating health. I haven't done anything with your little champion."

"I wasn't accusing you," she snapped.

"Ah, so the icy glare paired with suddenly sharp tone meant that you were a step away from turning to me for comfort, then?"

Sarah felt her eyebrows snap together. "I wasn't glaring at you!" Pointing at her face, she added, "_This_ is glaring at you."

"I've said it before, and I'll happily point it out to you again, Sarah," he replied, drawing closer to her. "Your eyes can be so cruel." The words weren't quite singsong. Then Jareth started forward without her, adding over his shoulder, "It makes it appear that you're always glaring at something. Generally me."

"I'm worried, Jareth! For one of my friends!" Sarah was glad that his back was turned to her; her ears were burning, and she didn't want him to gloat about her blushing as well.

Again over his shoulder, Jareth answered, almost too quietly to hear, "And obviously no closer to counting me amongst them."

"What?" The question burst out of her in a breath, as though she'd been hit in the gut.

He turned then, face as still and pale as the stone walls of the castle they'd left behind. "It's clear that you still think of me as an enemy or worse – as very little at all. You're still the same girl I last saw long ago – willing to take out her anger on whomever was nearby, never thinking that perhaps what was happening to her was her own fault. And just because the now-independently-living manifestation of a childhood stuffed toy is not here, you think that I must have had something to do with it!"

"You were the King! I thought you might keep track of your subjects!" she snapped. "I can't believe you just assume –"

"_I_ assume – !"

"My lady?"

The two combatants turned as one to see peeping around the bole of a tree a fox wearing a plumed hat and an eye patch.

With a glare that promised the continuation of the argument, Sarah turned and hurried toward Didymus. "Sir Didymus, I'm so glad to see you!"

"My… my Queen," he answered, his voice distant and chilly. The tone stalled Sarah's approach; the little fox took the moment to remove his hat and go down on one knee.

She started forward again, a bit more slowly. "Sir Didymus, please don't. My friends don't kneel to me."

He stood again and replaced his hat; there he stood at attention. "Your Majesty commands." Again, Sarah stopped moving forward; this time she examined her old friend. His bright little black eyes were downcast, his face tense.

"I don't command. I request."

Didymus flicked a skeptical glance up at her and then returned his gaze to the ground.

Worry and caution kept Sarah's movements slow, but she closed the distance between herself and the knight and sank to her knees before him.

Startled, Didymus scrambled to join her on the ground, crying, "My Lady – Your Majesty! Have some care for thy station! Your Majesty mustn't kneel to her subject!"

She flicked a look back at Jareth, who stood some few yards behind her, gazing with irritation over the Bog. "Who's here to see, except him?" she asked.

"I – Your –" Didymus' whiskers trembled in his upset. He glared briefly at the ground before swinging his muzzle up and huffing at her. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I must speak plain. _I_ would know! I know my place and would be unworthy of my post shouldst I forget it!" Wriggling uncomfortably on his knees, he continued, "'Twould be a betrayal of my _word_ to fail to execute all the forms of my duties."

Something was wrong. The crawling cold feeling rising from the vicinity of her heart told her this. Though her knight spoke sincerely, he lacked the passion she'd known. And Sarah had caught the emphasis on "word" and wondered at it.

"I have never known you to betray your promise, Sir Didymus. You're the most honorable person I know."

Another skeptical glance, paired with more angrily trembling whiskers, did nothing to ease Sarah's concern. "Your Majesty is too kind."

_Okay, enough._ Sarah shifted her legs to take a tailor's seat and gestured at Sir Didymus. "Please sit, Sir Knight," she invited in a tone as cool and distant as the fox knight's.

Hearing the shift in tone, he frowned at her, at Jareth, back at the bridge. "I beg Your Majesty's pardon, but… the bridge…"

"Don't make me command you, Sir Didymus," she cautioned in a whisper. The beginnings of tears made her eyes prickle, and she blinked them back with a fierce scowl. "Jareth can deal with any threat." She heard Jareth sigh loudly behind her but ignored him. "Since you seem determined not to speak with me as a friend, you and I are going to parlay. And you're going to speak plainly with me until we get to the bottom of this."

A pause. "'This'", Your Majesty?" This time, Didymus sounded more nervous than angry.

"Whatever you're mad about. Please, sit down."

Didymus fidgeted, disobeying her out of stunned discomfort rather than with intent to provoke, and demurred, "I would never presume to judge –"

"Stop it!" He stopped. Sarah blinked a bit harder at the burn in her eyes and tried to control her tone. "Are you a knight? Are you a man of honor? Of _truth?_"

Offended, he said, "I cherish truth – and courage – above all things!"

"Then _give_ me the truth!" This time it _was_ a command, and she blushed. "Please."

Didymus' shoulders slumped; he lowered his muzzle, and Sarah had never seen him look so defeated. Even when he yielded to Ludo's "superiority" in battle, Didymus had still had spark in his eyes and confidence in his stance. Finally, Didymus consented to sit on the ground, all four paws on the ground, like a true fox.

"Your Majesty, it has been nearly 18 years since you departed the Underground." Sarah felt her mouth fall open. "It has been nearly 10 since you called on any of your _friends_ here Below," he continued, looking up at her with a mix of anger and hurt on his features; "friends" was particularly bitter, and Sarah began to understand.

This time, she couldn't prevent the tears. "Sir Didymus, I didn't –" She choked on the words and struggled to hold back a sob.

Footsteps behind her told her that Jareth approached, and presently, there was one of those handkerchiefs dangling before her face again. She snatched at it and scrubbed at her eyes before asking, "18 years? That's impossible."

"Time moves differently in the different worlds," Jareth said, and both Sarah and Sir Didymus went slack with shock.

"It's been only seven years since I left. I'm just 21," Sarah said in a rush, reaching toward Sir Didymus. Tears thickened her voice again, "I last called on you all three years ago."

This time, Sir Didymus started. "I… I fear I have failed… to understand." He sniffed mightily, but he did not reach across to take Sarah's proffered hand. "I humbly beg Your Majesty's pardon for –"

"I didn't know the time worked differently, but three years is too long, too," she admitted. "I should have taken better care – I shouldn't have assumed. I'm so sorry."

Finally, Sir Didymus took her hand in his paws and dropped a kiss on her knuckles. "I… I have much to ponder. I am humbled, and I know not what to think."

Sarah took both his forepaws in her hand before he could release her. "Please let me talk to you again, once you've had time to think."

"'Tis not my place to deny Your Majesty anything."

"_Stop it!_" Sarah snapped, clinging to his paws. Before he could interrupt again, she said, "I can't ask you to forgive me yet; I haven't earned it. Even though it was unintentional, I hurt you, and I don't know if I can make it up. But I'm going to try." She sniffed. "Please say you'll let me try."

Didymus opened his mouth to respond and then snapped it shut. Sarah suspected he had been about to deny himself the right to deny _her_ again. Finally, the little knight nodded, and said, "Your Majesty may summon me at any convenient time."

The effort to control his gallantry actually flattered her a great deal, and hope warmed her just a little. "Next week, then?" she asked. And remembering her misunderstanding of time in the Underground, she amended, "In seven days. May I visit you here? I'll bring food. And someone to guard the bridge while we talk."

"Your Majesty!" Didymus protested. "'Tis not meet! I cannot welcome thee in such squalor – though my hospitality is ever at the disposal of any visitor!"

She shook his paws once to stem his protests. "I am the one who offended. I will be doing all the work. All I ask you to do is listen. Okay?"

With a visible struggle and a defeated sigh, he consented.

They both stood, and Didymus bowed low before her. He then turned and offered a briefer bow to Jareth with a murmured, "My Lord."

"Please, one last thing, Sir Didymus," Sarah said.

"Your Majesty?"

"Where can I find Hoggle and Ludo? I have apologies to make – I've failed them, too."

The little knight sighed. "My brother lives at the western edge of the Fireys' forest, Your Majesty. We meet twice a year, at the Solstices, here at the Bog, for I cannot abandon my post. He bears solitude well." With a glance up at Jareth, Didymus continued, "His Lordship may be able to tell where valiant Hoggle is. He withdrew to I know not where two years after we last heard from Your Majesty."

_Oh, no,_ Sarah thought, screwing her eyes shut. _I've betrayed the one person who won't forgive me._ It had taken so long to get the dwarf to trust that she wouldn't abandon him; he'd probably written her off for eternity. Still, she must try.

"Jareth?" she asked, finally turning.

Looking very put-upon, Jareth sighed and answered, "It will be the work of a day."

"Then I'll visit them both day after tomorrow."

She turned back to the little fox knight, who was frowning consideringly at Jareth. When he glanced back at Sarah, he started, embarrassed to be caught. Before he could say anything, Sarah reached out her hand to him, saying, "I will see you next week. And thank you."

He kissed her hand again, bowing low over it. "Your Majesty."


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth_ doesn't belong to me.

* * *

After seeing Sarah safely back to the castle, Jareth winged silently over the forest that housed the Firey clans. It usually made him forget, if only for the time it took for his wings to tire, whatever was bothering him. Flight didn't clarify things, or lead him to an answer – hell, if it did, he doubted he'd do it this much. What flight did was demand his entire attention; he couldn't afford to take his attention away from the not-so-simple mechanics of thermo- and aerodynamics. Flying in clear air was effortless. Being airborne in a body that weighed hardly a pound with unpredictable aerial phenomena was a bit more difficult. More importantly, Jareth always had to be aware that he was Underground, where even a raptor like a barn owl was damned low on the food chain.

His owl form was escape, in every sense of the word he could imagine.

He didn't like being upset with Sarah. He didn't like that that overzealous, chivalric, loud, ever-so-good, animated stuffed toy probably had the right and reason to treat Sarah so coldly and make her cry. He didn't like that even he was a part of the reason for it.

But she did deserve it. Her and her making assumptions and being so damnably human and _just her._

And he didn't like that thought, either. So he'd made sure she was ensconced in the castle, poring over her language and etiquette texts, and then shifted into his wings. "Going bird-brained" is what he'd once called it as a child just learning the technique.

Jareth was certain of Sarah's success in regaining Sir Didymus' regard; Jareth's clearing up the misunderstanding about time had done away with much of the problem. Seeing the hope dawn on Sarah's face meant that he had disregarded the wary, protective look Didymus had given him at the end.

He would overlook such behavior at present, motivated as it was by Didymus' affection for Sarah. Beyond that, the two males would have little to say to each other. That had been so even when Jareth had still held the throne. When Sarah's expectations had placed the little fox knight into Jareth's employ, those expectations had also given Didymus a good occupation. The little knight had been born, per se, as an old, Quixote-like figure with no sense of smell. Once Sarah had solved the Labyrinth, and it had become clear that she would not immediately take the throne, Jareth had simply sent the knight back to the Bog. It was, after all, what he was made for. His dedication to duty had served well since then; Jareth suspected that dedication would serve even better in coming days.

The warm current that had held him aloft abruptly ended, and the white owl plummeted several yards before some furious flapping could get him steady again. _Damn her – infuriating woman!_ Jareth thought, a little unfairly, letting out an angry screech. Flying, clearly, was not serving its purpose of emptying his head. He thought in horror, _She made me lose track of a thermal – something the fledgling learns his first time aloft!_ If he hadn't been so incensed at himself and the fox – and at Sarah, in turn – he'd have been in awe. It took something incredibly important to make him forget how to fly properly.

Then his sense kicked back in, and Jareth scanned the surrounding airspace for other winged beasts. The daytime sun dazzled his owlish eyes – _and not in a positive way, _he growled inwardly – and made it unlikely for him to see any danger. The superb hearing was a bit more reliable; he could hear nothing out of the ordinary nearby, either. However, more creatures than just owls could fly in near silence.

_That's it,_ he chastised himself_. Time to land. _At least he could protect himself magically while afoot. The only magic he could perform while in wings was the transformation spell that would get him _out_ of wings. And while that could end up being a fine defensive strategy, it still required time that an opportunistic foe would use.

A quick visual check, backed up by a few moments of careful listening, showed Jareth a large, fairly solitary tree in which he could land. He aimed for a broad branch halfway up, backwinged silently into position near the trunk, and changed.

The sensation was difficult to describe. Having never absorbed water and swelled like a sponge did, Jareth couldn't really say that that was how it felt. But it was the best that he could have offered, if asked. The outward substance, the mass of him, which he drew inward and spun out into wings and talons and feathers, resided in a space deep within.

This space within was a philosophical problem for many an aged and retired Fae. Was it the soul? Was it the ethereal plane where souls might reside? Was it just an internal pocket that was psychological rather than physiological?

Jareth, being quite young, didn't give a Firey's detachable ass about it. All he knew was that _that _was where he stored the mass of himself that didn't become the owl. And he knew that that storage felt like fluid. And he knew that when he shifted back into his natural form, it was like opening a water skin into a desiccated sponge, which then swelled into its original shape.

"Hey, whatchoo doin' up dere, ol' bossman?" cried a voice from below.

Jareth looked down into the upturned faces of three Fireys. One of them – the one who'd hailed him, probably – was clutching its head by its protrusive beak and holding it high. This canted the creature's gaze wildly out of any reasonable angle from which to speak to Jareth. He caught himself before he could turn his head upside down and sideways, like an owl.

"Yeah, old fairy-man!" called a shorter, rounder one, to the vast, loud amusement of its companions. Its skinny long hands came up to cup its mouth. "Why you up in de tree? Trynna be a squirrel, 'stead ovva fairy?"

The Fireys cackled wildly, slapping their thighs and losing a few body parts in the process. Jareth rolled his eyes, snapped his fingers, and smiled slightly at the sound of a small explosion below him. Following that was the sound of small, meaty bits landing in the surrounding bushes and sailing off into the leaves of the tree on which he stood.

"Yeeee!" squealed the head of the unfortunate Firey who had last spoken. Lazily, Jareth reached out, plucked the head out of its upward trajectory, and brought it to eye level.

"Care to repeat that?" Jareth drawled almost pleasantly. "I didn't hear it very well from up here."

The Firey head babbled something about the moaning of the winds and the whispering of the leaves. "You musta heard dem, bossman! Dey play tricks on de ears, yah?"

"Yes, they must. Well, it's fortunate for you that you reassemble so easily, isn't it?" he answered, dropping the head. The head's right arm was just below, and it unfolded in time to catch the head. From a prickly calkenberry bush rolled the torso and one of the legs, and Jareth happily watched the head wince. The other two Fireys bounced laughingly from behind the bush.

One of them held out a leg and waggled it. "Chitsymonk, I gots de leff one here!"

"Yah, put it back on, so we can go," the other one urged. "De ol' bossman don' look like he wanna play."

Chitsymonk's right arm reached out and put the head on the torso's shoulders. Then it accepted the leg and reinstalled it, too. "Man, none of dem hairless ones wanna play!" it lamented, trying to use one leg to reattach the right arm. Long practice, Jareth assumed, allowed it to succeed after the second attempt. "We go find my other leg, and let's go."

Jareth sighed and rubbed at the spot between his brows, dismissing the Fireys altogether. He had the rest of this day and all of the next to locate Hoggle. He wasn't going to get any calmer or happier today, he couldn't muster the give-a-damn to continue his search today, and it was clear that he couldn't forget it all in flight. Maybe he could forget it in drink.

_Mother would frown mightily at that,_ he thought, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. And with that thought, Jareth knew where he was going next. A lazy gesture, and he was gone.


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Henson Studios, etc, own _The Labyrinth_.

* * *

The sound of about one hundred twenty-five pounds of air being abruptly displaced – something like a pop coming from its bass register – announced Sarah's arrival in her bedroom. With much less melodrama than she'd employed in her earlier years, Sarah threw herself facedown onto the bed.

Jareth had dropped her into the study and suggested that she do just that before teleporting right back out. And for a good hour, she'd applied herself. It pleased her that it was easier to study here in the Underground than it was Above, where all she did was _think_ of the Underground. But something was missing when Jareth wasn't there to jolly her along, or badger her along, or irritate her out of studying altogether.

And with that disturbing thought – that Jareth was crucial to any part of her life – she popped up off the bed in search of something distracting to do. Perhaps she could explore the rest of the castle, or goof around in the Escher room some more. She turned right as she left her chambers, aiming for the main staircase that lay beyond a handful of alternating turns.

It had been a good week since the castle had shifted around without Sarah's say so. Either Sarah had gotten more authoritative, or the sudden focus of her magic made the castle nervous; either way, its corridors more or less behaved themselves. Mischievous defiance only showed in the switching of a gray flagstone for a plank or two of rotting basement wood, but the halls never made wholesale changes anymore.

Imagine her surprise, then, when she found herself stopping suddenly at a short, thick, lichen-covered wooden door. A well-worn path in the moss on the stone floor and a telltale fermenting-bread odor indicated that Sarah was standing outside the wine cellar. Rather, the sign hanging wearily from one nail indicated that it was a wine cellar; the smell implied a much larger selection. The strength of the scent suggested that that selection had been opened and spilled more than once, too.

With an irritated huff, Sarah considered having another argument with the castle. Two weeks ago, the concept of doing so would've given her a monstrous headache – and not the Power Headache that came with crystals and blue fire – but now, it was _conducting_ the argument that would cause the headache.

It was something of a psychic thing, Sarah supposed. The castle, like the Labyrinth, didn't really have a voice, but it managed to speak to her nonetheless; in turn, Sarah didn't know if the structures could read her mind, but she ended up speaking aloud to them anyway. This frequently left her in the position of literally talking to walls. It certainly didn't help that the Labyrinth's mental voice 'sounded' like it belonged to a smartly smug teenager. The castle's shy prepubescent stutter was pleasant in comparison.

_Regardless_, she thought, huffing again, _They're both impossible! I'm not in the mood today._ Her face set in lines of resignation, Sarah put one hand out toward the moldering door, and it swung obediently open for her. It didn't even creak or groan. Instead, a wave of cool air smelling heavily of fermentation washed over her and immediately retreated, leaving just a tendril to curl against her face. The castle obviously thought she should be here, and like an overworked, weary mother coming home to nagging children at the end of a hard day, she relented without a peep.

* * *

The lanky blond boy, all bones and burgeoning muscle, didn't even flinch when Jareth appeared silently from nowhere. He'd come nose-to-jerkin with Jareth more often in the last four hundred years than he could count. Dewander – that was his name, given to him by his adopted mother – merely tilted his head back, nodded once, and asked, "Shall I announce you to my Lord and Lady?"

Before he could answer, a gentle, middle-range woman's voice said from somewhere above, "Has Jareth finally come? You'd think that without a kingdom to run, he'd have found time to visit his dear parents some time ago!" If the words couldn't prove the woman's identity to a random bystander, then the drawling, dry nature of the voice certainly would. It seemed – and became abundantly apparent if the two of them were in the same room for more than five seconds – that Jareth had learned his manner of speaking at his mother's knee.

"No need, Dewander," he answered with a smirk. "My thanks."

"Anytime, Your Ma- Lordship."

"Admirable recovery." The smile he offered was the kind of smile given to a ten-year-old boy by his idolized college-bound older brother.

"It's the only slip I've made in three hundred years; it'll be the last." Dewander's quick brown eyes narrowed in determination, showing some of the years that lay behind them.

"Good man," Jareth answered, reaching down and ruffling the boy's riot of blond curls. He craned his neck back, gazing up past three stories' worth of reddish stone. There, standing on the balcony that overlooked the courtyard of slightly less reddish flagstones, was Jareth's mother. "Mother, may I?" he called up, grinning at a joke that he was certain only he would understand.

Lady Ahra, who had stood quietly above the exchange, barely lifted an eyebrow that was so blond that it was nearly invisible. Only a lifelong study allowed Jareth to see that her expression had changed at all. "Oh?" she asked. "Are you sure you're done, then? Don't let me rush you, dear. I'm certain Dewander could manufacture some other diversion in order to shirk his duty."

Jareth's eyebrow went up, too. "His duty is to block the door to the castle keep?"

"Oh, yes." Jareth's trained eyes caught the slight smile on Lady Ahra's pale lips. "His latest adventure prompted me to order him to stand silent and still for a full ten minutes." Her smile widened minutely. "He shall have to start all over."

Dewander's betrayed wail of, "Aw, Mum!" sent echoes bouncing gaily around the courtyard. A baritone rumble of laughter came from the open doors behind Lady Ahra, indicating that the lord of the keep was also in residence.

"Shall we make it twenty?" the Lady inquired coolly, resting the fingertips of one long-boned hand on the stone rail of the balcony. That stone, too, was reddish, but at least it was a polished reddish marble rather than the rougher-hewn blocks that made up the castle itself.

In response, Dewander gasped, "No, ma'am!" and swung back around, facing stoically away from the keep. A slight pout marred the expression of grim determination on his round face.

Jareth smirked back up at his mother and repeated, "May I?"

A gentle nod sent Jareth teleporting up onto the balcony. Lady Ahra held out her hands – long, spidery, white things that betrayed her great age – and answered, "At least you asked this time."

"After last time?" Jareth laughed, kissing the knuckles of both his mother's hands before drawing her into a gentle hug. "How could I dare?"

The Lady, a bit short by Fae standards, rested her cheek on her son's chest. For all that she was a cool, self-contained woman – every bit the noble that she'd been raised to be – Ahra would indulge herself with her family. The hug went on a little longer than her son would've liked, but since that is the way with all sons of loving mothers, it mattered little. Jareth waited as long as he could and then patted her shoulder when he wanted to be released.

"No one could accuse you of having a faulty memory," she drawled, stepping back and folding her hands. "That was when you brought my other little troublemaker to me." A quick downward nod indicated the silent Dewander.

The man's voice, which had laughed earlier, said from behind them both, "And what she's carefully not saying is that that was the last time you visited, too."

Jareth turned and greeted his father warmly, "Hullo, My Lord Father, O Lord Brannich, Master of the Fens and Fortunate Consort of the Infamous Eternal Beauty, Lady Ahra!" He swept a grand bow, flinging out both arms like spread wings, and grinned up at his father.

The older man stalked forward and reached his son in three strides. They clasped forearms in the manly, friendly way of Fae who trust each other; then they shared a brief, fierce hug and separated. Brannich was beginning to look as spindly as his wife, but it was clear that he had carried some weight before his age had begun showing; he looked only like a tall human with fine, short-cropped silver hair; a white beard; and a prominent, wafer-thin nose. Jareth had spent many a year regretting that the only things his father had contributed to his appearance were the nose and the hair; there were a few youthful scuffles that could have turned out better if Jareth had also had his father's former bulk.

"So what brings you home, my boy?" Brannich asked, resting a still-heavy hand on Jareth's shoulder. Jareth's own tendency to invade other people's personal space had also come from his father, a trait that he'd turned much more easily to his advantage – especially when dealing with the fairer sex.

"What else?" he sighed, arching an eyebrow and looking very much like his mother while doing so. "A woman."


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: the Henson and Lucas folks own _The Labyrinth_.

* * *

"I am faced with two options," said the Goblin Queen from her perch against the edge of an oaken keg. Her arms were crossed loosely across her chest, and her feet were splayed wide in order to straddle the cloudy pool of beer that spread below the keg's tap. It was a pose that would've stopped Jareth in the middle of any activity and left him to stare, openmouthed.

Idly, she continued, "I can distract myself, calm down by cleaning this mess, and debate with myself the wisdom of keeping the goblins out of the booze." To the casual observer, Sarah appeared to be addressing the castle, but because she was still extremely out of sorts, Sarah was actually ignoring the castle and speaking to no one but herself. "Or follow the advice of a building – and the lead of goblins – and get completely sloshed. Hmm. What to do…"

The castle offered an image of drunken goblins falling asleep and pasted Sarah's likeness in the place of one of the goblins; the picture was rendered in red, green, and brown crayon. Unwillingly, Sarah cracked a smile when she saw that the castle envisioned her curled up like a tired puppy, her rump in the air and her chin resting on folded hands.

"How little you know me, dear," she murmured.

A sense of curiosity answered her. The best way to describe the sensation is to liken it to the feeling of staring down at the bright eyes of a kitten whose tail still stood at a right angle to its body. Sarah fought the urge to try to snatch the castle up in both hands and nuzzle it, cooing at it with baby talk.

Instead, she settled for sniffing, "No, no. I don't want you to think less of me."

A sun-bright, dry sensation invaded her mind then, bringing with it the image of Sarah with her favorite blue, lace-up-the-forearms, billowing, wide-necked shirt falling dangerously low over her shoulders. The Labyrinth's mental voice was smug; the picture it thrust at her was rendered in dynamic, _almost_ proportionately correct ballpoint pen. The image expanded to include Jareth sitting on the floor against a wall, an amused look on his face; he stared up at Sarah as she stumbled forward and caught herself against the wall, leaning over him and casting him in shadow. The Labyrinth's much more experienced – and somewhat more accurate – imagination then showed Sarah leaning forward and Jareth's smirk widening and-

"Enough," she snapped, producing a crystal with a wave of one hand. With a speed and adeptness she didn't know she had – and not really certain what made her think she _could_ do it – Sarah reached out, pulled the Labyrinth's suggestive picture into the crystal, and sealed it. "You don't know me, either!" she snapped at the Labyrinth.

Its response was the psychic equivalent of a lifted eyebrow and a knowing smile.

"Okay, that's it. I'm getting a mop."

Some hours later, Sarah stood up slowly, one hand clutching a stiff-bristled brush, the other pressing into her lower back. Idly wondering what time it was, she cast a weary look around the cellar.

In the corner, huddled snoozing around an empty barrel, was a pile of drunken goblins. Shortly after calling a dozen of them in to help with the cleanup, Sarah had realized that this was the wrong choice. Rather than risk their sneaking off into some shadow with the best wine, or sucking on a tap, or making a bigger mess while trying to do either, Sarah had told them to empty the one keg and stay still. To her surprise, they had.

The rest of the cellar was actually looking better, especially considering that all the effort had come from one individual. All the puddles standing below the taps had been mopped up and the leaky taps fixed with magic, the broken bottles had been swept up, and the four dusty forgotten mugs had been magicked to the scullery. What remained, then, was an unreasonably large growth of mold and moss. Half of said growth was piled in front of the cellar door, having been peeled off the walls and floor. Great long strips of the stuff had yielded to Sarah's hands, but everywhere there were green and black traceries left behind. These were what she was attacking with brush and bucket.

Sarah dropped the brush into the bucket, sloshing some of the blackened water over the edge. The ache in her back and a hunger that was sick of being ignored were doing their best to convince her to leave off work for the day. For her part, she was inclined to agree. The room was cleaner, she was calmer, and she was not a drunken mess in the corner. The resultant smug sense of accomplishment drew her shoulders back and brought a smirk to her face.

"Great gods, Sarah, I've taught you enough magic to clean the entire castle in an instant if you were so inclined!"

The voice behind her was exasperated, but Sarah figured that it was a good sign that he was talking to her at all. She turned slowly, still recalling their earlier quarrel:

_"I'm worried, Jareth! For one of my friends!" Sarah was glad that his back was turned to her; her ears were burning, and she didn't want him to gloat about her blushing as well._

_Again over his shoulder, Jareth answered, almost too quietly to hear, "And obviously no closer to counting me amongst them."_

"But instead, you choose to take on a task usually given as punishment to rowdy goblins." Jareth was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. Flanking him in the hallway were a pair of whip-thin blond, ethereal beings who bore such a resemblance to him that Sarah knew who they were immediately.

_I am _not_ ready to meet the parents,_ she wailed internally even as she pulled on a genteel smile. Opting for a half-bow, half-curtsey that she used onstage when wearing trousers, Sarah addressed Jareth's parents, "My Lord, my Lady, I am certain that it's untoward to introduce myself, but as my advisor is currently being insufferable, I'm afraid that the task falls to me." The elder couple returned her bow – bending lower and holding it longer – from behind their son. "My name is Sarah Williams, and I am glad to make your acquaintance."

With a sigh, Jareth stood straight in the doorway. He drawled, "Your Majesty, may I present to you my parents, Lady Ahra, Mistress of the Fens, and her consort, Lord Brannich?" Behind him, his mother turned a gentle look of patience on her son, and his father was pulling a respectable poker face. But at the corners of the elder man's eyes, Sarah could see the same smiling wrinkles that indicated amusement in Jareth's face.

Before any of them could bow again or look awkwardly at one another and wonder if they should bow again, Jareth came forward. "I've invited my parents to dine with me in my private residence in the southern part of the Fenlands. Would you care to join us tonight?"

Sarah wanted to say no. She wanted it the way she'd wanted the goblins to steal Toby – that is to say with a childish longing and desperation born of weariness. Suppressing a sigh, she answered, "I'd be delighted, thank you." Her smile might've been a little brittle, but it was passable. With a nervous flick of her left hand, she said, "I must get myself cleaned up first – if that won't cause undue delay…"

Smirking, Jareth drawled, "Well…"

"Jareth, dear, don't tease your sovereign," chided his mother. Her alto voice was the auditory equivalent of a silk robe pulled on first thing in the morning; it was smooth, soft, and a little bit cool, but there was something about it that promised warmth, comfort, and security. Sarah visibly relaxed upon hearing it. "And my dear, don't ask permission of Jareth, even indirectly," she instructed Sarah, whose eyes widened. For all that the words were crisp, the tone – so like Jareth at his driest! – turned the words into a private womanly joke. "It only encourages more impertinence." The diminutive Fae glided forward on what Sarah was sure were a tiny pair of feet, holding out one spindly hand; Sarah bewilderedly accepted that hand. She wondered if she were to kiss it, shake it, or tuck it under her elbow.

Lady Ahra sandwiched Sarah's hand between her own and looked up into the girl's eyes. Unable to shake the feeling of being judged, Sarah struggled not to squirm. Without giving any indication of what she thought of Sarah, Lady Ahra continued easily, "And as to what I believe you meant, we are quite at our leisure and require only a room to sit in. We are very old and weary easily." Feeling the tracework of bones covered by gossamer skin that Sarah held, she could well believe it. "Your preparing for the meal will inconvenience no one save my son."

"Aye," Jareth's father finally added in a voice that put Sarah very much in mind of a Londonized Patrick Stewart. "And abominable of him to leave such short notice, too." The smile lines around his eyes and the long lines beside his narrow nose all deepened. "Left his honored parents but a few moments to cancel their own dinner."

"If we're to enumerate all my failures, let's not forget that I made Dewander stay home, as well," Jareth added with a smirk.

"Yes. A cruel older brother you are, dear," his mother drawled. "But if we were to enumerate your faults, we mightn't eat at all tonight."

With a gasp and a mocking glance in Sarah's direction, Jareth protested, "Mother! Not in front of the Queen! She doesn't yet know what a scoundrel I am." He grinned at Sarah and nodded upward. "Off with Your Majesty, then. We've lessons, you know."

Sarah didn't take the time to wonder at his playful mood; she bowed at the Fae of the Fen, who again responded with deeper genuflections. "Please, make use of the study or the smaller parlor while you wait. Jareth will attend to your needs while you wait." He smiled a little mockingly at her. She returned the look and added, "I won't be long." With that and one dropped crystal, she teleported upstairs.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth _belongs to Lucasfilms and Henson Studios, and all of those folks.

* * *

"So, Your Majesty, prior to this, you were still receiving tutelage, I understand?" Lady Ahra inquired over a spoonful of a thin mushroom-based soup. Her pale eyes, while hiding all expression but polite inquiry, rested most unsettlingly on Sarah's own.

"Please, Sarah will do just fine," she answered, which earned her a patiently indulgent smile. "But yes," she hurried to add.

Uncomfortably, Sarah fidgeted with the narrow ribbon edging the curve of fabric across her collarbone. The pale blue gown that she'd conjured probably had an Aboveground flavor to it that she was sure wouldn't be fashionable, but it was elegant and conservative. She'd in fact worried that she would be overdressed for the supper, but when Sarah had remembered how Jareth's casual outfits looked, she had decided to err on the side of formality. The gown itself was modeled somewhat after the gown that Lady Ahra had been wearing when Sarah had met her in the wine cellar. It was simple, with a boat neck collar, a pointed bodice, and an A-line skirt that brushed the floor. Jareth had failed to completely conceal a double take.

Fully conscious of Jareth's amused scrutiny, Sarah answered, "Yes. I was at college last week; this is my spring break – uh, Above. It's my last year." She tried not to laugh at this.

_Oh, god, spring break! 'Hi, where'd you go? Cancun? Bahamas? Alaska?' 'Hell no! I went Underground!'_

Lady Ahra lifted one eyebrow; knowing Jareth as she did, Sarah suspected that the older woman had a vague idea of Sarah's thoughts. Maybe her poker face was not as good as she thought. After taking a spoonful of the soup, Lady Ahra continued, "I feel that I can guess at 'spring break', but I am unfamiliar with the idea of 'college'. What is it, exactly?"

What followed was one of the strangest conversations Sarah could remember – prior to this second trip Underground, that is. All the conversations she had Underground were beyond all her understanding of 'normal'. Luckily, Lord Brannich and Lady Ahra were as sharp as their son and likely more so. While terms like 'college' and 'high school' tripped them up – _"Is there a low school?"_ – they grasped the basic idea of American public education.

Lord Brannich asked, "Are many families able to afford such extensive educations for their children?" He paused a moment and then asked with a hint of laughter, "It is extensive, isn't it? Human lives are still quite short, if I recall."

"Yes," Sarah replied, fighting the urge to "um, ah" and scratch her head. "Comparatively. The average lifespan is something like seventy-five years. And all children – or all American children, at least – are required by law to go to school through high school. It's paid for with taxes."

"Socialized education," Lady Ahra said in tones of surprise. She leaned forward and asked, "How well does that work, Your Majesty? Some nations have been toying with the idea for centuries, but there's so much that could go wrong!"

_Ah, good old American schooling. How should I put this? _A few very unpleasant years of middle and high school came to mind; that misery balanced itself against all of her theatre and dance classes. "Some of it goes very wrong," Sarah replied, smiling wryly and completely forgetting how uncomfortable she was with being called 'Your Majesty'. "But enough of it goes right to justify it. Most of the population can read signs and menus; most of them know enough mathematics to handle spending and managing money." Actually, she'd heard so many news reports contradicting those last two statements that Sarah thought she might be inadvertently lying.

She wrinkled her brow and added, "We're not seen as successful as the Japanese or the Germans, though. America has gotten rid of a lot of art education to compete in math and science, just to keep up." This led to an explanation of what Japanese and Germans were, as well as how one learned science when magic wasn't part of the curriculum. Sarah hardly noticed the time passing, and she entirely failed to notice the contented way in which Jareth watched her.

If there was anything in the worlds – Above or Underground – that Sarah was good at, it was making friends. Jareth bemusedly leaned back and watched his one and only love charm the stockings off of his parents with her unique mix of conviction, compassion, and grudging fairness.

He discreetly waved one hand to magic away the used supper dishes. There had been three courses, which was quite in keeping with an informal family dinner; for the same reason, there had been no servants to wait upon them. There was no need to be ostentatious, and Sarah was obviously comfortable with pouring her own water and wine, though she helped herself to the latter only once.

With another flick of fingers, Jareth produced the dessert, a pale green calkenberry sorbet with black seeds throughout. The appearance of the dish elicited a soft noise of surprise from Sarah and interrupted their conversation. They had moved on from a speculation about the application of physics in magic to the educational traditions of Goblin Kingdom nobles, and Jareth thought it best to distract them a little before his mother decided to tell embarrassing stories of his childhood.

"Oh, what's this? It looks delicious," Sarah asked, eyes wide. She poked at the quickly melting sphere with the silver spoon beside the crystal bowl. "Kiwi?" she guessed, "No, the seeds are too big…" At that, she looked expectantly up at Jareth through her eyelashes, and he found that he couldn't tease her.

"Calkenberries are similar in shape to blackberries," he replied mildly.

"And flavor?"

"That you'll have to discover on your own."

To his relief, all Sarah did was cut him an amused glare and dig in; with the quarrel they'd had earlier, Jareth counted himself lucky that she wasn't spitting at him. And just as she lifted the spoon to her lips, Jareth had to avert his eyes; the thoughts the sight sent through his head belatedly reminded him of his parents' presence. Unconsciously, his gaze went to his mother, who – to his complete lack of surprise – was looking keenly back at him. He lifted a brow, and she did the same, but her eyes flickered briefly to Sarah. Almost imperceptibly, he shrugged and smiled ruefully. The minute widening of Lady Ahra's eyes indicated comprehension, surprise, and quick calculation. Jareth was thankful for the centuries spent learning his mother's mannerisms, else he'd have missed the true richness of her character.

"Wow," Sarah breathed, regaining the attention of all three Fae. A little sheepishly, she pointed at the sorbet with the spoon and explained, "It's amazing. It's like orange and guava and… and mango, I think! Really great!"

This time, even Lord Brannich saw the indulgent smile that this brought to Jareth's face. And so as to embarrass neither his son, nor the one his son loved, nor even himself – for he was that pleased – he murmured to his wife, "I'm put strongly in mind of Dewander just now."

"Oh?" she replied, following along beautifully. Both Sarah and Jareth looked inquiringly up at Lord Brannich. Lady Ahra finally lifted a spoonful of the sorbet and took a delicate bite. "In what way, dear?"

He smiled at his wife and then at Sarah. She was struck by how his teeth seemed just a little yellowed; perhaps it was because the beard and moustache that framed them was so white. Jareth and Lady Ahra were absolutely perfect, and although Lord Brannich was terribly handsome and elegant, he did stand out from his family. Tiny flaws made him seem much more human than the others; he just had a much more approachable quality about him.

"The sorbet," he replied. "Dewander loves anything with calkenberries in it." He grinned again, bringing forth all the plentiful laugh lines around his eyes. "And he always takes a kind of surprised delight in them."

Sarah smiled back. "He must have good taste, then."

"He's a delightful child," Lady Ahra said. "Jareth brought him to me four hundred years ago, and his powers are developing beautifully."

"Brought him? Jareth?" Sarah looked back and forth between mother and son in confusion. "Wait, was he wished away? One of the changeling kids you mentioned?"

"Yes, by a fourteen year old girl who'd been – well, she had no reasons at all to keep him. Let it stand that she'd had no say in how she'd gotten him," Jareth said a little grimly. He used his spoon to sculpt his serving of sorbet into a pyramid. His eyes were downcast, but his expression was mild and reflected none of the grimness of his tone. "She did not run the Labyrinth. She begged me to take the child and returned to that from which she'd saved him."

In the silence that followed, Jareth could almost hear the proverbial gears turning in Sarah's head. Maybe if she could understand that he only played the villain when required to do so, she could forgive him – could forget whatever grudge she still held against him.

All this happened in the blink of an eye, and Jareth quickly looked up and smiled a little at her.

"And the changeling is the goblin I leave in the place of the child whom I take whose guardian fails to conquer the Labyrinth. The goblin is enchanted to look like the child; it either appears to sicken and die, or it runs away," he explained.

"That's terrible!" Sarah cried. The look of horror on her face made Jareth sigh. He was usually much better at masking his emotions, but he couldn't hold it in; he probably could've gone without reminding her of the other half of the interchange.

Sarah dropped her spoon, and it rang lightly against the cloth-of-gold runner. "Can you imagine what kind of pain that causes the family? They're watching their child die! Or disappear!"

"It's not their child," he began as patiently as he could.

"They don't know that!" Sarah interrupted him before he could go any further. "They believe that their son or daughter is dead! You said before that lots of Fae children don't make it! You of all people should know how hard it is to lose a child!"

"Remember that they didn't want the child in the first place, Sarah!" he retorted.

She shot back, "If they went for the Labyrinth, then they obviously reconsidered!"

"No, they thought about what was going to happen to them! 'My husband shall blame me!'" His voice went high and coarse for a moment. "'Please, I'm just watching him – his parents will accuse me!'" Here, he sounded vaguely Irish. Jareth leaned forward, forgetting the food – even forgetting his parents, who were observing the conversation with politely concealed interest. That either meant that they were disapproving or were simply enjoying the show; he didn't care. Sarah had to understand. "Every one of them was worried about what would happen to _them_ if the child were found missing. Only _you_ ever said that you wanted your little brother back."

"So what?" Sarah demanded, clearly not thinking of their audience, either. "That's still a family watching the child they love die, Jareth!"

"They didn't love them, or they would have gotten the children back!" Sarah jerked back, and even his mother's eyes noticeably widened. He'd almost shouted; he never shouted. Lord Brannich leaned slowly back in his chair and stroked his beard.

After a moment of silence, Sarah asked with quiet bitterness, "What about the ones whose babysitters wished them away? The babysitters wouldn't be hurt as much by a dead or runaway child, but the family who hadn't called for you would have to suffer."

Jareth stiffly answered, "There was, admittedly, a small percentage of cases like that. Those are unavoidable." This whole discussion was putting him grossly out of sorts. He had been doing his people a valuable service, even if he were coerced by the spell of the Labyrinth. Such a duty had a cost, and a few hundred grieving humans – and that's all that there had been over the course of millennia – had been worth it.

"A percentage?" she demanded, her horror mutating into outright disgust. "Percentages are numbers, Jareth! You are talking about people!"

An outside edge of Jareth's mind proudly pointed out that although Sarah was as mad at him as she'd ever been, she was keeping perfect control of her magic.

The rest of his mind, however, was wavering between anger and calculation. Should he continue the strategy he'd begun with – the unavoidable cost of his duty – which was getting him approximately nowhere except deeper in trouble? _Or should I retreat until she can calm down?_ he thought, loathing the idea of conceding the point to someone so utterly ignorant of the situation.

He chose to lean back and say with finality, "The practice was abandoned a good century before Dewander came Underground. The families now have a spell cast upon them that makes them forget. To their knowledge, they never had a child to begin with."

Sarah looked like she couldn't decide between tears and a physical attack. And just like her first day as Queen, the fierce accusation in her eyes made Jareth look away. In an icy tone of that he had never before heard from Sarah, she bit out, "That doesn't make what you had already done disappear."

She wouldn't understand. And like thousands of other foolish men with a desire to end an argument, Jareth told her so. "You have no basis for comparison, Sarah."

There was a beat of silence.

Oh.

_Oh._

Wrong thing to say.

The sound of a chair toppling backward was huge in the silence. Sarah's hands were flattened against the table, whitening at the knuckles, and Jareth could feel how her magic was struggling against her weakening self-control. All in the same fraction of a second, he called his own magic to protect himself and felt his parents do the same.

And between one fraction of that second and the next, Sarah went from red and brilliant with rage to white and frightened.

"Sarah!" Jareth cried, leaping forward just as she gasped and wavered on her feet. He caught her just below her right shoulder, and she looked up at him with wide eyes. Under his hand, he felt her steady herself and lock her magic back under strict control.

Faintly, she said, "I have to go to … go. I have to go somewhere." Her green eyes went glassy for a second, and she shook her head. "Above," she gasped, suddenly understanding. "I'm being called!"

"Then you must go," Lady Ahra said from across the table, allowing her defensive magic to relax back into its usual place. "Jareth, prepare her. You didn't have the luxury of a predecessor who was willing to train you. Since you're better than he was, you must help her."

Sarah shifted to protest, but her eyes glazed, and she wavered again. Jareth knew from experience that the summons was impossible to ignore. She weakly nodded.

"Sarah," he said in the calm, firm tone he took with her in classes. "Close your eyes and focus on the feeling. It should be like a line pulling at your stomach, and it should be making you a little nauseated by now."

"Yep," she nearly gasped, shutting her eyes. "What now?"

Jareth shifted his grasp from her arm to her hand. Hers was clammy, and it instinctively curled around his. "Call a crystal, and attach it to that line. When you release it, it will take you there." In her left hand, a crystal winked into existence, clear and perfect. "Are you ready?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Then go, my love. Good luck." He released her and stepped back from her startled glance.

And then she was gone.


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Henson Studios, whatever they're called. _The Labyrinth_ is theirs.

* * *

The world turned a few times around Sarah, blending into a smudged, abstract, wet-on-wet watercolor painting. It took longer than it had taken to get between the Bog and the castle; she was going Above, after all. Around the burbling nausea that was threatening to rise higher, Sarah wondered what she'd have done if the call had come before she'd learned the transportation spell. Have Jareth help? How would some selfish teenager react to both a man and a woman bursting through her window in the middle of a thunderstorm?

_Maybe as well as _I_ did to just a man bursting through her window in the middle of a thunderstorm, _she thought, rolling her eyes, which didn't help the nausea at all.

Then suddenly, she was there – no nausea, no stumbling, no wavering, no surprise or unsteadiness at all. No thunderstorm. No barn owl shape. No window. All the astonishment she felt – or should've felt – was muted, hidden behind the peaceful smile she could feel on her face.

The room around her was small and sterile and… _It's a hospital room!_ Though she felt that she'd normally back up and flick her eyes about the room, trying to get a quick impression of the layout, Sarah instead turned her head slowly from left to right once in a smooth arc. The floor was a pale mint color, flecked with tans and blues. The walls had wainscoting with a bluish off-white above and a pale green below. Everything about the room spoke of coolness and cleanliness.

Against the wall to her left stood a pair of goblins, and they were two of the cleanest, most well behaved goblins Sarah had ever laid eyes on. One was female and was wearing a white shift tucked into a patched red skirt; the other was a young male wearing a mustard yellow tunic. They curtseyed and bowed to her, respectively, and she nodded in response. Sarah herself face the door, which opened onto a brightly lit hall with linoleum floors and the muted voices of nurses and visitors.

With unwitting, unwilling grace, she lifted one hand and moved it smoothly to the right. The door swung quietly into place, shutting out the noise and light, leaving only the illumination of two lamps to her right. On the back of the door hung a full-length mirror. What she saw startled her, but she was unable to gasp at what she saw; she began to wonder if that impulse control was part of the compulsion spell that governed the ruler of the Goblin Kingdom.

Looking back at her from the surface of that mirror was a lithe, soft figure in rose tones and folds of fabric that invited touch. The bodice was high necked and ended with a ribbon just below her breasts, Empire-style. The skirt gathered there fell to the floor, hiding the soft slippers she felt on her feet. The ends of wide sleeves were tightly tied halfway down her forearms. Her chestnut hair was gathered into a messy, high bun; dozens of loose curls escaped from the updo to frame her face. She felt like the Edwardian version of a mother goddess.

And she had pointed ears.

All this she saw in a moment, for her neck was still turning her head to the right, toward the steel-and-plastic bed that she knew was there.

"It'shoo, in't it?"

The voice came from the lump under the white blanket on the bed. The lump itself was massive. The voice was rasping and breathy. The mass on the bed heaved upward with the sound of a labored intake of breath.

"Th' Goblin Queen?"

"Yes," Sarah replied in a comforting tone.

"Oh, praise Jesus."

Sarah moved forward on those hidden, soft slippers, and she felt almost as she had in the crystal dream where she'd danced with Jareth once upon a time. There was elegance in her movements that belonged in that magical ballroom rather than in this sterile cell. While the person on the bed heaved a few more breaths, Sarah moved to the bedside and gazed down on the one who had called her.

Through watery brown eyes that were so dark that they seemed black, a young African-American woman gazed gratefully back at Sarah. Curled up between one wide arm and one basketball-sized breast was a sleeping infant. The little girl wore pink and yellow bow-shaped barrettes on the ends of ten little braids; she, too, tended toward plumpness, but her yellow nightgown was threadbare.

Sarah couldn't help reaching out and stroking one finger gently down the child's cheek. It was soft beyond imagining.

"Please," the woman wheezed. Her eyes echoed the plea. "They's no one can take her. When I'm dead, she got nowhere t'go."

"There's no family?"

"No." The word was a whisper.

"You don't want her to be adopted? Fostered?" Sarah was grateful that the increasingly aggravating coercion spell allowed her to at least say what she wanted. But the tone was a smooth, warm one. She almost sounded like a younger, American version of Lady Ahra.

The response was a short rasp; only the sneering smile on the mother's face told Sarah that the noise was a laugh. "D'joo ever see how they treat muthaless chiljren?" A wheeze punctuated the question, and it was followed by a second, more careful wheeze. With that carefully gathered breath, the woman fiercely said, "I rather see her _dead_."

Sarah's astonishment at the woman's intensity had a good minute to fade while the woman herself hacked and coughed, trying to catch her breath. Surely, the social services weren't as bad as all that.

_But that's hardly my concern, anymore, _Sarah thought grimly_. My concern is the child._

Breaking the quiet, Sarah asked, "Do you renounce all claim on her?"

"Zat mean…" _Pant_. "She ain't mine no more?"

"Yes." In the pause, Sarah saw the woman grimace. A tear crawled down her left cheek, leaving a richer brown streak in the ashy expanse of her face. "This is forever."

The woman nodded, squeezing her eyes and her lips shut.

"She will not know. She's too young." One of Sarah's hands rested on the woman's cheek, pressing against the track of that one tear. "But she will be safe."

"Take her," the woman almost snarled. The spell prevented Sarah from jerking back in fear at the sound. "Take her 'nd go. I'm almos' dead. When she's gone, my heart'll break, 'nd I'll go 'head 'nd die."

Sarah curled her hands against the woman's arm and side and withdrew the child, who squirmed and whimpered against the cold. The mother lifted one heavy hand and touched the girl's braids, face, hands, feet.

"G'bye, baby. Mama loves you."

With a thump, the woman's hand fell back to the bed. The beeping of the machine that recorded heartbeats only then attracted Sarah's attention. The pulse was racing, skipping a few beats, beeping in time with the jagged green line that split the screen. The mother wheezed heavily a few times, struggling against sobs. Her hands fisted at her sides, and her eyes screwed shut once more, sending more tears down her face.

The sound of light footsteps came from behind Sarah and stopped at her left elbow. The female goblin held a thick, quilted gray blanket, and she offered it to Sarah.

"Thank you," she said, taking the blanket and wrapping it around the infant. She was careful to keep the fluffy material away from the child's face. When the male goblin lifted his arms, offering to take the girl, Sarah smiled and shook her head.

"I can only offer you a dream for your child," Sarah said to the child's mother, suddenly taking inspiration from her own experience, and from the argument this call had interrupted. Tucking the little girl into the crook of her left arm, she waved one hand, calling forth a crystal. Inside it swirled images of a strong young black woman with long braids striding across a stage, wearing scarlet doctor's robes. "Would you like to have it?"

The woman did not answer.

Sarah pressed the orb against the fingers of the woman's right fist. Slowly, it uncurled and moved to cup the crystal. Sarah withdrew and watched the woman's face ease out of its wrinkles and into the mask of sleep.

In the silence that was interrupted only by the slowly stabilizing beep of a heart monitor, Sarah retreated to the center of the room and summoned a second crystal. She looked at the two goblins, who each reached to clutch a handful of her skirt. Then she dropped the crystal, and they were gone.

* * *

"Mother, I can't stay away," Jareth said as patiently as he could. He ended up sounding like the man on edge that he was. "You just urged me to prepare her. I must go to the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. She will need me." With fidgeting hands, he unbuttoned the top of his jerkin, following the line down toward his waist, slipping each jet bead from the loop that held it. Once it was undone, he tugged at the collar of the black shirt underneath.

Lady Ahra handed him a cut crystal tumbler, which held a small measure of amber liquid. She poured another and handed it to his father before she answered. "She will not welcome assistance, my dear. That was quite a discussion the pair of you were having just before she left. Do not think that she will thank you for any interference."

"I remember the first summons I received, Mother." He tossed back the liquor – brandy, he guessed from the scant amount that actually touched his tongue – and set the tumbler on the small table in the center of the room. They had relocated to his parents' private parlor, a small room upholstered and tapestried in shades of green. The Lady and Lord of the Fens occupied the couch before the fire, and Jareth was striding back and forth in front of it. He insisted, "It won't be pleasant, even if it's one of the average calls where the wisher doesn't challenge the Labyrinth. I know Sarah. You saw how sympathetic and emotive she is!"

"I did."

"She will want to talk about it, and I alone am qualified to converse about the experience," he insisted, tapping himself on the chest with his fingers. With the same ungloved hand, he ran his fingernails against his scalp, furrowing his hair back. "And on the off chance that she _doesn't_ want to talk, then she'll likely shut down and internalize."

His father leaned forward on the couch and cradled his tumbler. With his elbows resting on his knees, he looked up at his son and asked, "Will she be willing to discuss it with _you_, considering your argument? Considering how emotive _you_ are, my boy?" Lord Brannich had never been a blustering kind of man, but he spoke even more quietly than he was used to do.

Jareth shrugged irritably, striding back to the small table at his mother's right hand and pouring himself another serving of brandy. "I suppose I'll bring her to you two if that's the case," he answered, forcing himself to take the brandy in slow, measured sips. After one deep breath, he asked, "May I ask your indulgence to do so?"

"Of course, dearest," Lady Ahra said. She stood and reached for her son's hands. He carefully cradled his mother's slim fingers. "All I ask of you is some forethought. You love this girl who deposed you. She is not indifferent to you, but if you do not take care, you may chase her away."

"Oh?" Jareth asked, lifting an eyebrow and smirking.

Well accustomed to this façade, Lady Ahra lifted her own disapproving brow and replied, "Just remember that you no longer have the strongest position in this game."

His smile softened, and he leaned in to place a kiss on his mother's cheek. "If there is anything I learned from you, Mother, it is that neither strength nor positioning matter if one does not also have cunning." He stepped back and saluted his father, releasing his mother's hands. "And in that, I am superior to Sarah."

"Well, yes," his mother replied. "You are superior to most in that regard. Besides, she is still only human."

They shared a smile, one that showed a single canine, one that he had learned while he suckled at her breast. Then he called a crystal and was gone.

* * *

When the teleportation spell was done, Sarah stood in her bedchamber, gazing down at the child in her arms. The forced calm and grace were still inside her, the mother goddess appearance still upon her. The two goblins looked up from their positions beside her.

Almost rhetorically, she asked, "What do I do next? What now, now that I've promised that she'd be safe?"

"'S Majesty – urr, 'S Lordship useta make a nurs'ry," the male goblin rumbled from her left, releasing his grasp on her skirt.

"Where?"

"Wherever, Majesty," answered the female goblin. She craned her neck to look at the child. "'S been a long time since the last baby." She looked back up at Sarah. "Yer brudder, Majesty."

That reminded her. Someone else had done this; her advisor could come advise her. "Jareth," she murmured, gazing back down at the infant. "I need you."

"Sarah."

She looked up to find him standing at the door to her bedchamber. She couldn't understand the look on his face. It was too gentle for astonishment and too reverent for want. It also was quick to disappear behind a cautious, neutral expression.

"What now, Jareth?" The moment the question was out of her mouth, Sarah felt the Labyrinth's spell on her lift. Its absence made her stagger, and her face sank into creases of worry. "What am I supposed to do with her?" Even control of her voice had returned to her, rendering the inquiry harsh and panicked. Now that it was gone, Sarah found that she missed the poise the spell gave her. She sank as carefully as possible to the edge of the bed.

Jareth came forward, cautiously and quietly. "For now, you sleep," he answered. "Both of you."

"The goblin – I'm sorry, I didn't ask your name…" she began, nodding at male who stood near the foot of the bed.

"Chiss, Majesty," he murmured, bowing. "Tha's Miritt." The female bobbed a quick curtsey.

"Thank you." Sarah lifted her head to look back at Jareth, and the effort wearied her. "They said you used to make a nursery?"

"I did," was the answer. And even though Sarah thought the request was obvious, he just stood over her, watching her.

* * *

Jareth peered down at Sarah thoughtfully for a bit. The exquisite vision that she'd been when he'd entered had vanished. Sarah had looked almost Fae, but the glamour faded as he'd watched, leaving in its wake a lovely young human marred by fear and ignorance and exhaustion. Gently, he took her by the elbows and pulled her to her feet. The infant in her arms whined at the movement but quieted immediately. "That can wait till tomorrow. You, Miritt, Chiss. Turn down Her Majesty's bedding."

"Please," Sarah added.

"Please," he echoed in tones of patient indulgence.

The goblins quickly obeyed, and Jareth sent them on their way, even thanking them without prompting. Still holding Sarah's elbows, he pushed upon them to propel her backward to the bed. When she stopped and leaned against the edge, he instructed, "Sit."

"Please."

A sigh. "Please." Another sigh as she obeyed. "Foot, _please_." She kicked her right foot up, and he caught it and quickly removed one blue silk slipper. He asked for the other foot, and they repeated the process.

Then Jareth reached out his hands and requested, "The child, please." Sarah handed the girl over; her own eyes were half-lidded with weariness, and her hands shook. "Can you conjure your nightwear?" he asked, careful to speak clearly and slowly.

Sarah nodded, but even as she did so, the movement shifted into a side-to-side 'no' gesture.

Suppressing a laugh, Jareth gathered the infant against his shoulder with one arm and reached out to Sarah with the other. On the tips of his fingers rested a crystal. When Sarah looked at it askance, Jareth turned his wrist and made the orb dance back and forth across his hand. "I'll even keep my eyes closed," he cajoled, stilling the crystal and fulfilling that promise.

He felt the weight lift from his fingers, and he felt that tiny draining feeling that indicated a successful conjuring.

"Jareth!" Sarah scolded, sounding a little more like her usual lively self.

He grinned. "My eyes are still closed," he pointed out. "What's that human expression you used the other day? 'No harm, no foul'?" It really wasn't his fault that Sarah hadn't examined the crystal to see that he was offering her a short, fitted black nightslip before she accepted it. "Now, do lie down and cover up, Sarah. There's a child in the room." He waited until he'd heard her huff and shift and move all the covers and settle in before he opened his eyes. Generous, that's what he was. And there she sat, with the duvet pulled nearly up to her chin, her arms crossed over her chest, and a scarlet face.

"There, now." Jareth grinned. "And what do you think of my present?"

"That other human expression is: 'Beware Greeks bearing gifts,'" she muttered.

"Oh, no, I'm much too old not to have heard that one," he replied. "I must say, though, that I'm flattered. We Fae honor the tricksters and the cunning." Before Sarah could wind herself up into an argument, Jareth placed the infant against her folded arms, which instinctively went around the child.

Confused, she protested, "Wait, Jareth, the nursery!"

"Unnecessary," he said. "Lay her beside you. She will sleep until her hunger wakes her. Sleep with her until then. I will search for a wet nurse."

"But …"

Jareth reached out and laid one finger on Sarah's lips. "_Sleep_. All else will wait."

With one hand, Sarah gently pushed his hand away. "But I might crush her. Or smother her, or something," she fretted.

He made a quick gesture, transforming the infant's blanket from a fluffy quilt to a thinner, woven swaddling. Another gesture changed Sarah's duvet into the heavy blue-and-green quilt from her home. Then he leaned over Sarah, ignoring her surprised squeak, and grabbed her second pillow, tossing it to the floor. "Now lay her beside you, and go to sleep."

"Jareth – "

"Sarah, _sleep!_"

"Don't leave!" He saw the tears well up, and Sarah blinked hard to keep them from falling. "Please don't leave. Send for your parents; have them find a nurse. I can't be alone with her right now, _please_."

She was begging him, and Jareth couldn't refuse her. He knew he should've been disgusted with his weakness, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Give me a moment to send a message to my parents." He strode into the antechamber, where there were two wide windows guarded with spells and thick glass. He opened one and leaned out of it, searching for a suitable current of wind. With a thought, he had a message crystal in hand; with considerably more care, he changed the crystal into a bubble and gently sent it on its way. The magic was as delicate as the bubble itself, and Jareth's strict self-control was the only thing that made that message possible.

Once done, he returned to the bedchamber, where Sarah sat fretfully holding the baby. He was silent as he moved to the other side of the bed, sat on the edge, and toed off his boots. He shrugged out of his jerkin, making sure to keep his movements matter-of-fact and to keep his eyes off Sarah. No need to frighten her any more tonight, he thought, swinging his legs up onto the bed. A few flicks of his wrists put a pillow at his back and a blanket over his legs.

"Now," Jareth said, reaching over and taking the child. "Lie down." Once Sarah had done so, he set the baby beside her and said, "I will make sure she comes to no harm."

"Now sleep."

And she did.


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: Hensons, Lucasfilms, whatever. Not mine.

* * *

Jareth rather thought that Sarah must delight in surprising him, defying all his expectations. Defiance was definitely one of her most… trying characteristics. It was fine and good in the right times and places, but when it got in the way of his winning her, Jareth thought that a little pliancy on her part would go a long way.

For instance, Sarah was supposed to accept him after he'd offered her half his kingdom, himself.

She was supposed to get confused by the Escher room, distracted by a haunting song and the subverted rules of physics.

She was supposed to take the goblin army more seriously, to give them a chance to defeat her.

She was supposed to lose to the behemoth at the city gate; she was supposed to have remained enthralled by the replica of her bedroom.

She was supposed to stay with him in the crystal ballroom.

She was not supposed to make friends with Hoggle, Sir Didymus, or Ludo. They weren't supposed to help her, but then it wasn't really their fault.

She wasn't supposed to so much as make it past the first passage of the Labyrinth! In fact, she wasn't supposed to run the Labyrinth at all… but she'd adamantly demanded to retract her wish, the one that had started this entire series of events.

What Sarah _was_ supposed to do was to take the dream crystal and forget that she'd ever had a little brother; she was supposed to disappear from his life and let the forced stirrings of affection likewise disappear.

Obviously, she thwarted this expectation, too. The milder feeling had made way for respect and admiration – perhaps even infatuation… although Jareth had taken a detour to consternation and resentment for a couple of years. He couldn't get his mind off the girl who had turned his world upside down – who then had had the blinding audacity not to allow her fascination with him to deter her from her goal, as Jareth had done. The least she could've done was pine after him! Then years later, Sarah had unwittingly decided to claim her prize, her throne. And then she'd come back into his life, and Jareth had found it hard to remember why he'd ever resented her.

He sighed over his crossed arms at the young woman for whom he'd fallen so hard. The only thing keeping him from despair was the fact that she'd warmed up to him in the last two weeks. Well, there were more things – the fact that she startled him into genuine, delighted laughter; that she laughed at his jokes, that she didn't take him _too_ seriously anymore, that she'd called on him because she needed him, that a glance from underneath her lashes could make him gasp – but who was counting?

There she lay, turned toward him, nearly on her stomach. One arm was curled on the mattress, encircling but not touching the infant; if Jareth breathed deeply, he could feel her knuckles brush against his side through his shirt. Sarah's mouth was slightly open, and her eyelashes looked impossibly dark and thick against her cheek.

Jareth's smile was halfway between affectionate and amused. The quilt – that horrible link to the Above had lost much of its smell in the preceding two weeks, thank the stars – had fallen back, exposing Sarah's shoulders. One strap of that risqué little black nightgown had slid halfway down her arm, and Jareth enjoyed the view. Another thing he enjoyed about her was her modesty. One thing lacking in Underground women, with their long lives bereft of children and thus full of attempts at making one, was simple modesty. Gowns were tailored to enhance anything resembling charms; they put on glamours in the mornings as Aboveground women put on makeup. Sarah, however, squawked and crossed her arms over her chest if her favorite shirt gaped at the neck. Therefore, any skin Jareth saw was a surprise, a treat.

_One of which I intend to receive in greater quantity_, he thought, his smile shifting from gentle humor to lascivious speculation. _With any luck, sooner rather than later._ But he could wait. He was a patient man… kind of. Internally, he could admit to being selfish and demanding; all Fae were to an extent. Consider it an inextricable part of being immortal and frequently, chronically bored. However, having that longevity and being an innate master of strategy, Jareth could manage wait a while longer.

Another thing that Sarah was supposed to do upon finding herself in the same bed as Jareth was to be naked, satiated, and eager to repeat whatever activities had first exhausted her. Barring that, she was to rise to wakefulness, discover his arm around her waist, jump to embarrassed conclusions, and pretend to still be asleep. _Because she'd secretly find this manner of waking to be imminently pleasant. Of course._

But the infant started wailing. _The little creature didn't even have the courtesy to wriggle and whine first,_ Jareth lamented. He could've used a little more warning. Or a little more time to Sarah-gaze. Whichever.

At the first indignant shriek, Sarah shoved herself halfway upright, eyes wide and hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She looked like a wolf crouched over her young with one arm on either side of the baby; her back was one long, tense line curving from beneath the blanket that hung from her waist. Jareth found the tableau less charming than amusing. Had the blanket slid a little lower, his gasping for breath would've been for lust rather than laughter.

Sarah first looked down at the baby girl, recognition returning; then she glared up at a chortling Jareth. Dozens of expressions flitted across her face, ranging from sarcasm, to panic, to laughter. Finally, she settled on a dirty look and an exasperated, "Any word on a wet nurse?"

"Nothing yet," he said through a smile. His gaze involuntarily dropped from her face, and her eyes followed his, and she went scarlet.

"Jareth!" Sarah squawked. In one wide, angry motion, she jerked the quilt up over her head and shoulders. From inside the opening that showed everything from her eyebrows to her mouth, she huffed and glared at him.

He grinned and shrugged. "I would apologize, but I wouldn't mean it." Ignoring the muffled grumbling coming from under the blanket, Jareth scooped up the screaming baby and got up. "In any case, _they're_ not what she wants," he continued, looking suggestively at Sarah over his shoulder, "But her screaming's doing none of us any good, now is it?"

* * *

"Lady Ahra, I can't thank you enough," was the first thing Sarah said as she entered the brand-new nursery. She barely spared a glance for the pale, simple tapestries and the red wood cradle. The wet nurse whom Lady Ahra had brought that morning was in the second room of the nursery, doing her job. Sarah only had eyes for the Fae lady who'd made it possible.

Jareth's mother turned her head at Sarah's entrance, showing not the least bit of surprise, though Sarah had burst through the door without any greeting. Instead, she slowly shifted to face Sarah and smiled.

"I've been a mother, Your Majesty," she replied, "And it was difficult enough to listen to the screaming of a creature I'd carried for three years."

"Three _years?_"

"Fae." A shrug.

Deciding, for once, to just accept the information without question or discussion, Sarah came forward, holding out her hands to Lady Ahra. The Fae took the offered hands with an expression that Sarah thought looked a little predatory. Had you asked why, Sarah wouldn't be able to pinpoint what had given her that impression; the Lady was only smiling one of her small smiles — not one of the curling, single-canine ones that she'd taught Jareth to use.

Suppressing a slight tremor, Sarah asked, "How can I repay you?"

"Give me grandchildren."

After taking approximately a full minute to gape like a fish, sputter, blush, and make a failed attempt to pull away, Sarah squeaked, "_What?_"

"Grand. Children."

"Lady Ahra, I'm not married to your son."

"You needn't be if you don't wish to be."

"I'm not sleeping with him, either." Sarah's tone was quelling, but her expression was mildly panicked.

The lady's smile went from inexplicably predatory to amused and knowing. "Why not, Your Majesty? It would take little effort to change that."

Something in Sarah's expression made Lady Ahra release her hands when she tried to draw away again. Sarah only took two steps backward but stopped when she remembered Jareth's admonition to stop retreating. "I…" she began. One hand went up to rub at the opposite arm, making the fine cotton of her sleeve hiss softly. "I can't," Sarah finished in a voice hardly above a whisper.

"I assure you that you _can_, Your Majesty." Lady Ahra's tone was wry. "But since I can see that that's not quite what you meant, would you tell me why not?"

And Sarah felt as if Lady Ahra had given her too much wine — her fears all just fell out of her mouth in a heap. "I'm twenty-one – too young to get married! I don't just sleep with guys! I tried it in college, and all it did was mess me up! And what about my life Above? I've been trying to find a way to get Jareth back on the throne – a way to go home, let my family know I'm not dead, finish college, get a job! Be a normal human!" She waved a hand; then she threw the crystal that appeared at the wall. A couch appeared, and Sarah invited Lady Ahra to sit with another wave. She flopped down tailor-style, tucking her long skirt around her legs. Lady Ahra delicately took a seat at the opposite end of the couch.

"And if I _did_ – " she gulped "– marry him or sleep with him or whatever…" A deep breath sucked past the hands that she clasped in front of her mouth. "What then? I'm only human. I'd – what? Spend three years pregnant with a Fae child, grow old and die, while Jareth stayed the same? Assuming that he didn't get bored of staying with the same human for sixty or seventy years! Assuming that he loved me and wasn't with me just to get a child or get the throne back or to punish me for turning him down the first time or —"

"Sarah," Lady Ahra interjected. The tone was the tone of a mother, and Sarah felt her throat close on the next words that were on their way out of her head. Once sure that the younger woman wouldn't interrupt, Lady Ahra continued, "It seems that I am the wrong person to ask these questions. I can think of one person who is better equipped for this discussion." Her arched eyebrow left no doubt about whom she meant.

Curling in a little more on herself, Sarah fretted, "How could I ask him all that?" A dozen different protests sped through her mind, faster than she could ever articulate them. They all melded together into an ugly mass of insecurity, resentment, and fear, and Sarah found that she couldn't begin to explain it to Lady Ahra, and she said as much.

"Gracious, Sarah, that sounds rather… normal." The pause before the last word was deliberate, obvious. Perhaps the Lady was being sarcastic, but Sarah couldn't tell; she cut a sharp look at Lady Ahra, just in case. In response, the Lady spread her hands wide and smiled a little ruefully. "Some things are truly universal. It is too much to ask if you love him – you must decide that in your own time – but you are not indifferent, are you?"

"Nnnnooo…." Sarah admitted slowly, quietly, with a painfully red face. She felt like a grade-schooler standing in front of the class, being forced to admit that she didn't have her homework.

"And I can assure you that he is not indifferent to you," said Lady Ahra with an ironic smile.

Even more quietly, Sarah murmured, "Nnno… he's not."

"Has he already spoken?" The Lady sounded almost smug, like an old gossip waiting for her suspicions to be confirmed.

The hem of Sarah's skirt was suddenly fascinating to her, and while her fingers toyed with the fabric, Sarah answered, "When I… when he came to bring me back, he… well, he told me that the compulsion spell made him love me. So no, I don't suppose he's 'indifferent'."

There followed a silence so long and uncomfortable that Sarah had to see Lady Ahra's reaction. And instead of the glow of Fae smugness, Sarah looked up to find the Lady's mouth slightly open in well-bred disbelief. To see such unconcealed emotion in a woman who excelled in self-control shook Sarah more than the entire preceding conversation.

After only another moment, though, Lady Ahra blinked and brought her expression back under control. "I see," she said quietly, looking down at her laced fingers. Another moment's pause worried Sarah – did Lady Ahra disapprove? Did Sarah reveal more than she should have? Did the Lady think she'd overestimated her son's affections? Unconsciously, Sarah mirrored her pose, focusing on her whitening knuckles rather than the silent figure beside her.

"Sarah," Lady Ahra said again, this time in an earnest, thoughtful way. Her hands came to rest on Sarah's, gently untangling tightly knotted fingers. "I don't want to overstep my bounds," she continued, and the pause that followed urged the younger woman to meet her eyes. Once Sarah had wound up the courage to look up, Lady Ahra continued, "I do not know what understandings lie between the pair of you, nor what complications you have created for yourselves. What I am sure of is that you must talk. Soon."

_Ow!_ Sarah tried not to wince at the suddenly tight grip the Lady had on her fingers. _How can there be that much strength in those hands?_ _Owowowowowow_. "…This isn't about grandchildren anymore, is it?"

Almost ruefully: "They can wait."

"You know something."

"I know many things." Now she sounded a bit playful. Her grip relaxed.

It was Sarah's turn to grasp at the other woman's fingers. "Wait, you know something specific, don't you?"

"It is not my right to say," the Lady demurred, "but perhaps your new suspicion will bring about that conversation you should have with my son." Effortlessly, she tugged her fingers out of Sarah's grip. She stood, smiling peacefully down at Sarah. "And that is the only admission you'll ever get that I meant anything other than what I explicitly said."

Sarah almost wanted to smirk at Lady Ahra, as if they were conspirators, but she didn't quite dare. After all, she hadn't completely understood what Lady Ahra had implied. _All I have is a command to 'talk' to Jareth and that I should grill him about his feelings._ Instead, with a quizzical smile and thoughtfully narrowed eyes, Sarah stood and said, "Thank you for the gift, then."

"Your Majesty," Lady Ahra answered in a way that sounded like 'you're welcome'. She curtseyed and headed toward the corridor; her smooth gait was absolutely silent, and Sarah found herself envying Jareth's mother for neither the first nor the last time. Before she crossed the threshold, she turned and asked almost offhandedly, "Do you gamble at all, Your Majesty?"

Unsure of the question's real meaning, Sarah slowly answered, "Not as a matter of habit, Lady Ahra."

"Ah. Then let me say one last thing: I have observed that big bettors are the ones who walk away with the prize; those who make small bids never win."

This time, Sarah did smirk conspiratorially. She curtseyed deeply and drawled, "My lady is gracious."

One of the sharp, canine-revealing smiles flashed across Lady Ahra's face. "And that is the last time you'll hear me speak so unsubtly."

"I'll try to keep up."

The Lady's laugh was low and crystalline.


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth _and its stuff belong to Lucas, Henson's folks and not me.

* * *

Just as he'd been doing the first time she met him, Purt was wearing a horned Viking helmet on his hind end, and as he walked before Sarah, the hat waved back and forth in a decidedly feminine manner. She'd followed Lady Ahra from the room after checking on the infant and her nurse. The lady had gone, but Purt had been passing, chasing a chicken; saving the chicken and gaining a companion to distract her and delay her mission to find Jareth, Sarah had asked Purt to accompany her. Sarah would have been trying to suppress laughter at the sight of the swinging helmet if she'd not been distracted. Lady Ahra's words, or at least a handful of them, ran over and over in her mind. 'Conversation' was the one most often repeated.

_How am I supposed to begin this? 'So I'm ready to go to bed with you now'? 'Hey, hot stuff, wanna bone?' _Sarah passed a hand over her face and sighed. _'Nice shoes – let's fuck'? Or, best of all – 'Your mom wants grandkids. Can we get married and settle down – right now?' _She sighed again.

"A heavy sound, that," came the familiar voice, making Sarah squeak. Jareth smirked at her. "And a much less dignified noise, _that_." Beside him and behind him, the bas-relief carved faces grinned at Sarah from the doors of the study. He leaned against the door that remained closed while holding the other one open lazily with his left hand. Today, he was in a tawny brown outfit with somewhat baggier trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Sarah didn't find herself objecting and tried not to give him too obvious a once-over.

Hoping that she wasn't as red in the face as she felt – hoping, too, that she could muster her famous courage for this conversation – Sarah muttered, "You read minds too, I suppose?" Then she dropped her eyes to Purt and said, "Thanks, Purt. You can go."

"Yess'ur Majisteee!" he piped. Horned rump a-swaying, he took off down the hall at a gallop. Sarah watched him take the turn at the end of the hall, counted to two, and winced at the far-too-loud crash that followed.

When she turned back to Jareth, she found he'd stood up straight and crossed his arms, and he was shaking his head at her. The little wisps of hair that hung long near his face waved in counterpoint to the shaking; Sarah fisted her hands to keep from reaching out and tucking them behind his ears.

_Oh, my. _She sighed again._ I'm really going to have this conversation._

"You realize they're virtually indestructible, don't you?" Jareth asked her, one peaked brow going up. "Drop one from the top tower, and all he'll do is make a lot of noise before bouncing." With a grand gesture of welcome, Jareth moved to let Sarah into the study. "I would know. I've done it." Behind him, the wood rippled as one of the figures in the topmost carving plummeted to the bottom panel; true to the story, the figure bounced comically, limbs flailing, and landed on his feet on the eighth bounce. When Sarah giggled weakly, Jareth glanced at the door and sniffed. "An exaggeration," he said coolly. "Goblins bounce three, maybe four times."

With an almost inaudible click, the door swung shut behind Sarah, and all the carven figures turned and ran to the side of the door that was now inside, perhaps sensing an upcoming scene.

_Well. I may as well set the tone,_ said Sarah's 15-year-old bravado. Unsure of where the little voice had come from, Sarah sent up a fervent prayer to the castle, the Labyrinth, and whatever else might be listening – even Jareth and his unconfirmed-but-likely mind-reading abilities – and pointed firmly at the door.

"Other side, please," she commanded in her best schoolteacher voice. "Now."

Each dime-sized little face gaped at her in astonishment, doubt. A few turned to one another, jerking thumbs in her direction and lifting eyebrows. Some just glared defiantly at her.

She smiled gently, raising one hand to shoulder level, as if to wave. A few of the bas-relief beings waved in response.

Then she slammed the palm of that hand against the door, and the whole thing went almost blank. The only motion came from carved mugs falling to carved floors and graven curtains flapping in the wake of some extremely frightened carved creatures. The power also locked the doors, and Sarah wondered if Jareth had heard the _click_ behind the _slam._

Into the silence, Jareth asked quietly, "Something on your mind, Sarah?"

Her name came from behind her from about six inches away. His breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck and brought them to right angles from her skin.

_Yeah, you. Me. Us and our future. _Before turning, Sarah schooled her face into sober thoughtfulness. If she began like that, then they'd be on the floor and naked in no time, and Sarah wouldn't have any answers. Her ovaries said, _'You'd have an orgasm, though. Who cares about answers?'_

She ignored this.

Turning, Sarah faced Jareth. He was looking down at her with hooded eyes, both dilated to the point that they were little more than darkness surrounded by a thin ring of blue. The idea of mind-reading drifted through her head again.

She opened her mouth and her courage went tearing off into the wilderness, howling the whole way.

"Tell me about the compulsion spell," she said in a voice about three pitches too high.

Something passed over Jareth's face, fractured the expression of calm, predatory seduction, but it was gone so fast that Sarah couldn't place it. "It _compels_, Sarah," he answered, his voice low and velvety. He turned the answer into something suggestive.

"I've noticed," she answered more sharply than she meant to. With a quick sidestep, she was past Jareth and further into the room. It took some willpower not to turn to her customary safe place at one of the fireplaces. Neither was lit, and it didn't matter because Jareth would know that she was trying to hide. In eight paces – too few taken too quickly – Sarah strode to her desk and leaned against the edge that faced Jareth's desk. The morning light came in only weakly through the arrow slits on this side of the castle. "Tell me about it," she insisted, once she was perched comfortably with her arms crossed.

Indulging her, and not hiding the fact that he was doing so, Jareth said, "It starts with the wisher. She wants something so badly she can't bear to do without it. A believer craves something, priming the spell, gathering the magic necessary to call me." He was moving toward her, taking far more than eight steps to go the same distance across which she'd nearly run.

Distantly, she noticed that he did not say "The Goblin King" or "Queen". He'd said, "me". And that was important, she remembered. She just couldn't recall how. Her mind was too busy splitting its attention between how he was stalking toward her like a cat toward a crippled bird and how sexy he looked doing it.

Three steps away, he continued, "Then she makes her wish." Step. "She gets me." And step. "You know the rest."

Too close, he was too close. "Yes," she answered acidly. "She regrets the wish, not knowing her power, and solves your puzzle and goes home." He paused, less than an arm's length away; he hid the hurt well, but when Sarah lashed out, she landed a hit. More gently, she said, "And then she gets the same curse and doesn't understand _why_."

"The _why_ is simple, Sarah," Jareth answered, his voice more normal, shifting into mockery and instruction. "You won. Congratulations, here's your prize." His arms swung out, long and thin, to encompass the castle, the Labyrinth, himself, Didymus, everything. "All this and one little inconvenience. Forgive me for not joining in the self-pity."

Sarah ground her teeth, astonished at how she'd managed to make this into a fight yet again. "Maybe I should have said, 'how.'"

The man before her finally slid out of predatory mode and reverted back to exasperated, thwarted teacher. "No one knows, and believe me, I've tried to find out. I had reason enough to do so," he sighed. He turned aside, glaring tiredly at Sarah as he moved toward his own desk. "Your … castrating trousers were not the most ridiculous things I'd ever had to wear, Sarah. Just the most uncomfortable."

She couldn't stop the giggle that popped out. "I'm sorry." It had been the mid-eighties; she'd been fifteen. She was blushing and felt genuinely contrite. But she giggled into her shirtsleeve while Jareth glared some more. "Truly, I am!" _Snort. Cackle._

"I'm sure." When he perched on his desk, bracing himself with his left leg and letting the right one dangle loosely, he managed to look unconcerned and relaxed. Damn him for being attractive, no matter what! "You wait," Jareth warned, wagging a bare finger at her just once. "One of those wishers is going to imagine the powerful, magical Goblin Queen in a thong bikini. You won't laugh then."

He grinned when Sarah's laughter choked into silence. And he was just on the edge of saying something smug and cutting – Sarah could just sense it – when she said quickly, confusedly, "Well, you're not wearing them now."

Jareth's posture didn't change; in fact, he went absolutely still. "No," he answered without inflection.

"And I don't have pointy ears or an empire-waist dress anymore, either." Her voice was small, as if the understanding that was creeping up on both of them would run if she spooked it.

He could've said, "No," again – could've given himself and her a little more room to process the information. But he wasn't human, and Sarah kept forgetting that.

With a sudden sharpness in his gaze, Jareth stood and said quietly, "You're not here for a magic lesson, Sarah."

Helpless, she whispered, "No."

"What are you here for?"

"I don't – "

He was coming closer. "Yes, you do," he insisted.

God, he was too close, she'd just figured something out, and he was there, and she could smell him, feel his breath on her cheek. He wasn't touching her, just waiting those two inches from her skin, and she tried to cling to the thoughts that were wriggling away from her.

Helplessly, again, she admitted, "Understanding. To understand. That's why I'm here."

With careful hands, Jareth cupped her elbows and made her close those two inches between them. The fabric of their shirts rasped softly when they met, and oh, he was warm. And his face was coming nearer, blurring when he moved so close that she couldn't focus anymore.

Warm, wet, his words moved over her ear, "You have it. Just acknowledge it, and it's yours."

"It can't be that easy," was her weak objection. Sarah was too conscious of her hands hanging limply by his sides, her thumbs resting against his thighs. She felt idiotic, childish. _Grab or push,_ part of her demanded.

"Getting it is," Jareth murmured against her cheek, withdrawing a scant inch. "Going on with it…?" His hands slid up her arms, leaving prickling gooseflesh covered in cotton behind them. The effect was worse when his bare skin stroked up her neck and into her hair, and she held her breath. He drew back far enough to meet her eyes.

"I wonder if you'll be able to piece me back together when you break me."

"You're not that fragile. _I_ am," she protested, creases forming between her brows. And his thumbs seemed to agree, brushing delicately back and forth against her jaws.

Almost inaudibly, pleading, "Don't fear me."

With a mental picture of rolling dice, Sarah leaned up and in, her lips meeting Jareth's, her arms closing in around the small of his back. His arms slid down and around her, and his mouth opened under hers, and she was lost.


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: _The Labyrinth_ belongs to Lucasfilms, the Henson folk, etc.

* * *

Squirming under his touch – those long-fingered hands scraping over the parts covered with cloth, tracing over the parts that weren't – Sarah was bent backward, not quite lying on her desk. Her hands dug furrows into Jareth's hair, and she held him in place by the short hairs at the nape of his neck; he growled against her mouth, and something in her rejoiced at the noise.

Jareth pulled away just long enough to rasp her name, and then he began suckling at her neck. He nibbled his way down the muscle that joined her jaw and collarbone, scraping his teeth lightly against the skin every inch or so. Sarah hadn't known that she'd like that. The grand total of two lovers she'd ever had had both been younger than twenty-four and uniformly selfish and bland. One flat-tongued lick returned Jareth to her ear, where he tugged on Sarah's earlobe and breathed a laugh when she whimpered and squirmed. She hadn't known that she liked _that,_ either.

Sarah, in turn, ran her hands back through Jareth's hair, scraping her nails across the scalp; she grinned when the tips of her fingers brushed over the lightly pointed tips of his ears, pulling a groan from him.

Had it really only been two weeks – less, actually – since this man, this electrifying creature panting under her hands had come back into her life? So much had happened so fast; it made her head spin. But somehow, after seven years, all her teenaged hormones and untutored imagination had been justified.

_Seven._ She frowned suddenly, guilt biting at her. _But… it's been eighteen here. God, he's been waiting a lifetime._ Small wonder Jareth was making such helpless noises.

"Where've you gone, Sarah?" Jareth murmured in her ear, holding on to that first syllable, regaining her attention and sending a twinge down her spine. "You're a million leagues off." He drew back, pulling her a little more upright, concern in his expression.

_Is he scared I'm going to run? Again?_ Shame cooled her ardor, and she curled in on herself a bit.

"Sarah?"

Clutching at his forearms, trying to reassure him that she wasn't retreating, Sarah murmured, "Eighteen years, hm?" She eyed the collar of his jerkin.

He turned his hands to cup her elbows. "But not nineteen; not fifty." Releasing her just long enough to reach up and turn her face to his, Jareth leaned forward again and added, "And not a minute more." This kiss was not hesitating like the first, nor hungry and increasingly insistent like the second through fourteenth – or fortieth, whatever – but it was as reassuring as a kiss could be. He sealed his lips firmly against hers, withdrawing only enough to pull gently at her bottom lip three times.

When Jareth finished this kiss, his forehead leaning against hers, Sarah pulled back and covered his hands with her own. Slowly, she tugged them away from her face, but she curled her feet in behind his knees, hoping to convey that she was pausing, rather than stopping. His face had gone wary, but he dropped his hands to Sarah's hips and stood, waiting.

"I'm no virgin," she began, turning a searing red; she could just barely keep eye contact, and it wasn't very good eye contact, either.

"I don't care," he replied, leaning in with an expression of relief.

She stopped him with a hand on his chest, and she continued, "But they weren't exactly the kind to stick around –" Jareth glowered "– And it's been a _long time_, and we're going really fast." Sucking in a deep, courage-bolstering breath, Sarah said, "I'm feeling _really_ guilty about the eighteen years, but can we _please_ slow up – just a little?"

And in a gesture that kept her memory of him grateful and respectful for the rest of her life, Jareth tucked her into a hug and murmured, "Of course."

Sarah curled her arms around his neck and nestled her forehead just under his ear, unable for the moment to voice her thanks. After a few seconds of fierce blinking and one hefty sniff, Sarah sighed and turned to press a suckling kiss to the soft spot behind Jareth's ear, triggering a gasp.

"Not to say we need to _stop_," she said a little shyly. "But I wasn't really envisioning the first, um, time to be, ah, on a desk." He pulled back to look at her, tightening his hold on her hips. Both eyes were dilated, leaving very little blue, and Jareth's face showed some of the discomfort of his restraint.

"_First _time," Jareth repeated tightly, shutting his eyes. "Sarah, I swear I will proceed as slowly as you need me to, but _must not_ torture me like that." He opened his eyes again and showed her his predatory, one-canine smile. "Try to control your language, and I'll control _me._"

She laughed a little breathily. "It's not as serious as all _that!_ Just… you don't have to treat me like glass, but this is… a little overwhelming. Be ready to put on the brakes a little."

The I-Don't-Understand-What-Aboveground-Thing-You-Just-Said face made an appearance for a moment, but then Jareth shook his head. "Understood." He leaned in for another kiss.

Sarah broke it with a quiet, "Sorry." She tried to soften it with a smile, and the smile went wide at Jareth's comically overdone sigh. "Just one more thing."

"One?"

"Shut up." They grinned briefly at one another, and Sarah marveled at it. Then, more seriously, she said, "Protection."

The I-Don't-Understand-What-Aboveground-Thing-You-Just-Said face came back and stayed for a while. "Sorry?"

Sarah sighed, this time, and said, "I don't want kids yet. Fae may have trouble breeding, but it would just be my luck to get pregnant with quadruplets _right now._" She was blushing furiously, and she felt just as stupid saying this to Jareth as she had felt when she told Lawrence and Trey that she insisted upon condoms. "I'm not at all ready."

Jareth smiled fondly at her. "Don't worry: Magic."

She snorted and drawled, "Like I haven't heard _that_ one before."

And this time, the I-Don't-Understand-What-Aboveground-Thing-You-Just-Said expression seemed to sit down and begin setting up camp on Jareth's face. When Sarah briefly explained the "magic penis" stories cooked up by many a teenage male and reminded him that he was dealing with an Aboveground human, Jareth laughed. "No, Sarah. _Actual_ magic."

"Oh? _That_ seems like something a guy would say just to get in bed with a girl, too." Her answer was arch and clearly in jest. Her left foot, still tucked behind Jareth's knee, drew a slow path up the back of his thigh.

One long-fingered hand flipped twice before her face, and suddenly Jareth held a crystal in front of her nose. The image inside was of her own body; three lights flared in the image's abdomen. Jareth's voice came out half an octave lower than before, and his breath was a bit shaky when he said, "I will teach this to you tomorrow. If you somehow have to tell my mother to expect grandchildren in a couple of weeks, then I'll give you an iron blade and bare my throat to you myself." Easing the seriousness of his words with a small smile, he added, "I am not ready for that, either." The smile spread into a grin. "I've only just got you to myself."

Sarah took the sphere in one hand, and it popped like a soap bubble.

Jareth leaned forward and ensnared her in a toe-curling kiss, one with a stunning amount of delicate tongue work. His hands pulled her flush against him, and Sarah felt the familiar vertigo of teleportation.

When the world stilled, her feet dropped to a floor, but Jareth's hands stayed on one hip and one buttock. Curious, Sarah turned to see where they were.

It was an unfamiliar room, its floor hardwood, its pale stone walls hung with dark blue tapestries. They were still in the castle and evidently in Jareth's quarters. A sturdy four-poster hung with steel-gray drapes dominated the wall to her left. The room itself was somewhat smaller than her own but otherwise was a fair replica of it.

This was all the impression she managed to get of the chamber, because Jareth's mouth latched onto that soft spot behind her ear, making her knees wobble.

"May I?" His words were gentle in her ear, but his voice was just a note or two above a growl.

Sarah grabbed him by the hair at the nape of his neck, pulled him into a kiss, and began drawing him backward to the bed.


End file.
